Leanne Sobel
USA
Our Story
Our son, Ilan Seth Sobel was born on January 22, 2010 at 10.50pm. The pregnancy was uneventful – almost too easy if you like! Ilan’s due date was Janaury 29th and we were completely surprised when he came early as I had no Braxton Hicks or other indicators of labor and even exercised the day before! Labor was quite traumatic – he got stuck in the birth canal and I pushed for close to 3 hours. Finally, as they were prepping a C-section, he wriggled down and made his way out! On an initial exam, he appeared to be a healthy 7lb 2 oz beautiful baby boy. He stayed with us for one hour before I was moved to a recovery room and then roomed in with us. My husband noticed, during a diaper change shortly after he was brought to our room, that the foot where he had a heel stick done was bruised and still appeared to be bleeding slightly (just spotting, not gushing). The nurse said she would definitely mention it to the pediatrician but didn’t seem overly concerned. The next morning they took him away for a routine exam at which time a platelet count was ordered because a few petechiae were observed around his groin and trunk. The count came back at 3,000. It was re-counted and then hand counted to make sure there was no error.
Ilan was brought back to our room in an incubator and we were told he was being taken to the NICU. The rest is a bit of a blur as we didn’t have a clue what was happening but I do recall hearing something About a transfusion and my husband signing the consent form. Over the next week Ilan received around 14 transfusions and one dose of IVIG. Most of the transfusions were not using maternally matched platelets – it took About 48 hours to locate a set and he needed something to try to keep his counts dropping in the meantime. He also had a dose of antibiotics and a bunch of tests to rule out any other conditions. Two head sonograms showed that luckily there had been no ICH. He also had the blue light treatment for jaundice because his bilirubin rose (he wasn’t fed due a concern About bleeding in the stomach). He came home at 7 days old with a count of 80K but unfortunately they dropped again.
We went back to hospital, this time to Inova Fairfax Children’s Hospital where he was transfused with another set of maternally matched platelets. This time we had the blood work from Wisconsin so the pediatric hematologist was really able to get a good match. The count rose to 120K and continued to rise. He was discharged after 24 hours and after 12 weeks of visits to the pediatric hematology group at Children’s National Medical Center, he was discharged from their care.
He is now a happy, healthy (almost) one year old!
Leanne
