Chris (Benjamin Button)

                The cutest baby that looks like an old man so naturally I called him Benjamin Button. He was admitted to the nutrition center on July 1^st as an outpatient. His mom brought him every day so that we could note progress and to make sure she was breastfeeding and that he was latching on correctly.  He was so tiny and you could literally count every bone in his body. There wasn’t much improvement he was to little and weak that it was hard for him to latch on and when he did his suck was so weak that we would make the mother manual express and give it to him with a syringe.  For the five days that he was with us his temperature continually dropped from 97.5 to 95.0 to 93.3. We do our best to educate about keeping baby warm which shouldn't be too hard to do here but in the end the mother takes her baby home and does what she wants. On Friday July 5^th she arrived at our door at 830 am and you could just see that he was going. His eyes were fixed far away and his breathing was irregular and I could hear his heart rate slowing in my stethoscope. So many things were running through my mind but none of them were helpful in this situation. I knew that there was nothing I could do to save this baby but with a crying mom looking at me for help and a frantic roommate (not Carlie) trying to come up with ideas “let kangaroo” she takes the baby from the mom and places him underneath her shirt so they are touching skin to skin. What is she doing?!? “Let’s feed him breast milk” She starts manual expressing from the mother. That’s not going to help!! “Let’s do cpr” ok but then what….. I do cpr for about 15 mins while the mother is crying and Bronwyn is spacing out next to me. With no sign of life, no pulse, no breathing, no heartbeat I finally stop. I didn’t want to but what was I suppose to do…… maybe I’m not as good of a nurse as I thought. Chris died July 5^th on my floor right underneath my hands. He was 2 months old to the day.