Umbilical Woes

I hate CJ's umbilical cord stump. Yes, she is four weeks old and it is still there. Grrrr. It just refuses to fall off. So yesterday I noticed that it was looking a little pink around the stump. It also has had some drainage. Every time I touched it to swab it with alcohol she would cry. Sometimes it was a cry like she was hurt and sometimes it was a cry like she was just mad and wanted me to leave her alone. I thought that I would give it the weekend and see what happens. If it was worse on Monday I would call the doctor and see what she thought about it. Well, it was worse today. A lot worse. It's all red and puffy around the stump and the drainage is just gross. So what did Momma do? Why she looked up information about it on the Internet. Was this smart? Probably not. Of course it turns up all these horrifying scenarios about what could happen from the cord being just find to the bottom half of her body rotting away (okay, maybe they weren't quite that bad). I decided to call the pediactrics clinic and see if there was on on-call nurse that I could talk to. The phone number sent me to Pediatrics Urgent Care and I left my name and number for someone to call me back. When they did, I explained what was going on and she advised me to bring CJ in to have a doctor look at it. So here I am, a brand new mother, thinking the worst about my poor baby's umbilical cord stump. By the time I left to take her to urgent care, I had convinced myself that I had ruined her belly button and she was going to go through the rest of her life with a maimed navel because her stupid mother didn't do something right. Well it ended up not being that bad. The hard part of the stump (where the hospital cut the cord and sealed it) is rubbing her belly raw. The doctor said that she could give her some oral antibiotics for it, but she didn't think it was necessary at this time. She advised me to put neosporin on it and keep rubbing it with alcohol. She said the cord looked fine and that the drainage is normal. She did go ahead and cauterize part of it because it was so goopy. Hopefully it will fall off soon. The drainage has stained almost all of CJ's onesies and I hate it when she cries at me when I swab it with the alcohol. An odd thing about today is that the doctor who saw us is the one I was originally assigned to in the hospital. I declined her because her office is in a different town south of here and I wanted someone here. She was so great that I almost wish she was here in town, but I do like the doctor I ended up with. I do wonder if any of these doctors get annoyed when young, first time mothers, such as myself, come in to the office or to urgent care when it isn't really necessary. Though, I didn't know and it is better to be safe than sorry! Last, CJ is up to 8 pounds 4 ounces, the little porker!