Hello and welcome to my Page
I am the one and only SugarBear. Son to Huggie & Bo and baby brother to Chicken!! Thank you for visiting this page that my mom created just for me. She worked really hard on the background and graphics on these pages, so before you take them, please ask...I always have to ask before I take something!!!
The Story of My beautiful SugarBear...
SugarBear came into this world on Friday June 12, 1998 (which makes him 2 years old now!). He was a surprising 10 pounds 11 ounces. Nobody was expecting that!!! The doctors kept saying he was only around 8 pounds and that relieved me since Chicken was 8 pounds 15 ounces!!! I knew something was wrong when, in my 7th month, I started swelling up. The staff at UTMB assured me nothing was wrong but they could not have been farther from the truth. I developed toximia and nobody there ever did anything about it. Due to this fact, they should have induced labor at least two weeks before Sugar's due date (June 5th) but they decided to wait and in doing so, endangered his life. When he finally entered this world, after 12 hours of induced labor (whew...at least it wasn't 32 hours!!! See Chicken's page) he was wailing and screaming. What do you expect? It was 5:30 in the morning!! Don't these people ever sleep???
After he was born, he was whisked away to be washed up and weighed etc...he was put into my arms for a total of 5 minutes and didn't get to be held by dad at all. They gave me 75cc of demerol to help me rest (yeah, right, try knock me out!!!) and I didn't awaken until 11am. I woke Bo up and asked him where the baby was...he was no where to be found. Bo went to the nurses station and asked when they bring the babies up from the nursery and the nurses told him they would be up by noon. Noon came and went and the baby was nowhere to be found. Finally Bo went down to the nursery and found something that will haunt him forever. As he walked into the nursery, there was SugarBear, under an oxygen tent. The nursea informed him they were getting ready to take the baby up to NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). But would not give him any more information. You want to talk about going on a rampage!! Finally, the story came out. When Sugar was born, they found several black spots on his lungs which were pnemonia. Everything that happened really did not make sense due to the fact that at that time they said that he was overdue and there was meconium in the amniotic fluid and that was what caused the pnemonia. But all medical records state that the amniotic fluid was clear. To this day we still do not know what the deal was. We do believe that my toximia had something to do with it but the hospital will never admit that since they failed to diagnose the problem.
On with this story...nope, it isn't over yet. He doesn't get all better and we all revel in the happy ending...yet... He spent two days in the NICU, the biggest baby there. One good thing is that they let me & Bo and even Chicken go see him. Everyone had to wash their hands with special soap. Here is a picture of Sugar during this time. Our hearts were broken to see him laying there all hooked up to oxygen and machines. With tubes coming out of every available vein and artery.
He was finally able to be moved down to the nusery but had to be in what was called the blue team. The blue team was in the back of the nursery and was for the babies that had been able to get off the oxygen but still had to have tubes in and out of every hole they had. By Sunday, the hospital decided to release me but not Sugar. We decided that we had to go home because Chicken had not seen usin several days and was staying with my mom at home. There was not much we could do at the hospital at that time. All of the nurses in the part of the nursery Sugar was in made us feel very uncomfortable about being down there with him. Like it was our fault he was so sick!! So armed with all the phone numbers we could get, we headed on home. BTW...I forgot, Sugar was under the bilirubin lights 24 hours a day now because his bilirubin count was dangerously high and they had to get it down as quickly as they could so it would not damage his liver. At this time, I could only hold him for feedings. And I was not able to nurse him at all because he had IVs in his feet, hands and head. All I could do was pump my breast milk and feed him from a bottle. We made the 3 hour drive home and as soon as we walked in the door, the phone rang. It was the hospital saying they may need us to come back to the hospital because some papers may need to be signed. They said Sugar may need a blood exchange. What this is is they would drain all of his blood out of one arm and pump all new blood into the other arm. It seemed his body could not defeat the bilirubin. The hospital said they would keep us informed and if it looked like something like that was necessary, they would call us immediately.
We knew exactly when all blood test results were going to be back in the nursery and we did find one nurse who was wonderful with us. It took many phone calls and many rude nurses who acted like we were totally inconviencing them because of our concern for our son. We were on the phone long distance 5 times a day just praying for some sort of change. Lo and Behold..it finally came!!! On Tuesday, the x-rays showed all of the pnemonia was gone. By some miracle, after this happened, his bilirubin plummeted!!! They called us Wednesday and told us they were happy to announce that we could finally come and take our son home. His bilirubin level was still above normal but the doctors assured us that it would return to normal in no time. Sugars feet have always been a bit yellow but it is nothing to be concerned about. So, rejoicing, we headed to the hospital Wednesday morning and stayed the night in a hotel (paid for by the hospital) and Thursday morning, after his circumcision and all the papers were signed, we took our beautiful baby boy home.
In case you are wondering, we did report the attitude of the nurses and staff to the patient advocate. We also reported the fact that we were not informed at all that Sugar was in danger. I feel that someone should have come to us immediately (whether we were sleeping or not) and let us know what was going on instead of Bo walking in on that. Of course, nothing was ever done and I was even sent a customer service survey to fill out. Did I? Oh, you bet I did!!!
Sugar is now a big healthy two year old who is into everything imaginable!!! But do we ever love him for it. His stats are below...
Stats: Name: Sug R. Bear Age: 2 Birthdate: June 12th Zodiac sign: Gemini (just like dad) Birthstone: Pearl (thanks Blue for finding that for me!) Occupation: Texas Tornado Located: Texas, obviously...LOL Favorite Place: Jumping on my brother's head
These are a few of Sugar's favorite things... TV: He loves to watch PBS and Nickelodeon. He likes Blue's Clues (of course), Franklin, and Teletubbies. His fav videos are Jungle Book, Stuart Little, and Annabelle's Wish. Dinosaurs: Ever since we took him to see Disney's Dinosaur for his birthday, he has been running around roaring. He cracks me up!! Pete/Repeat: I am sure you have seen those toys. It is a parrot that reports everything you say. That is SugarBear. Really have to watch what you say around him. His new favorite words are doggone it and awesome!! Independence: The child is discovering his independence. But that doesn't stop him from crawling into bed with us in the middle of the night. We had to get a king size bed to fit us all on it and so Bo and I could sleep!!!
Here are some links that you may be interested in visiting...they are all child friendly...
I am on the prowl for more interesting child safe sites that I can allow my children to go to. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!!!
Won't you please go to our welcome page and sign the guestbook. We would love to talk to others that have had the same experiences we have.
In the meantime...check out the rest of our pages!!
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