04/12/2007

So, it was an interesting first day over in bay 2 apparently, mostly because Emery's mommy is crazy and drove everyone nuts I think. Well, maybe not so much, but it turns out that Emery's nurse today was orienting with another nurse, so she was new, and Emery's mommy is an old hack at the NICU... So I called today and found out that Emery was saturating 90% on 50% oxygen. Since he's been off the vent he's been saturating 95% to 99% on 40% oxygen. They had gone down on his rate from 28 to 26 now this morning, and the nurse said that they weren't going to do his breathing treatments at 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. anymore, because they wanted him on a regular schedule. I told her about how they were making sure that his breathing treatments needed to be done before his a.m. blood gas, but she said that it wasn't so important to get blood gases so early over in bay 2, but they woke him up to do the treatments, did his treatments, and then did his a.m. blood gas which stunk. They changed his tube and that made him mad, too. So I basically bugged them all day (I only called 3 times ... once every hour.. oh, and I called the Dr. but he was out of town), wanting to know if his oxygen had come down, if his blood gases were okay blah blah. Finally, the last time I called at 2 o'clock I told the Dr to find out what was going on. Well, the neonatal nurse practitioner ended up calling me back at 3:30. I don't know if it was because I called so much. Dr. Klein came over and checked on him. They had a mini-pow wow and they felt that it was a steroid rebound. The nurses decided to give Emery a bath to see if they could cool him down (because, you see, it turns out that Emery has a massive reputation for his temper.. which was blossoming in fine form in bay 2) and the NNP thought his room was hot and dry. So, they cooled him off, fixed his room temperature, and they had no plans to change his tube again until tomorrow. She assured me that Dr. Dagle and Dr. Klein were aware of his reaction and said that if he fluctuated between 40% and 55% oxygen, they were okay with it. So, I figured.. fine. He's not back on the vent, so that's good. I know Emery back slides. He's done it since day one, and I really just wanted them to make sure to watch for the steroid rebound because the last one was so ugly. So, everyone in bay 2 was well aware of a possible steroid rebound, actually thinking this was it, and then sure enough, I called back tonight and he's sitting back at 40% oxygen. Mr. Temper calmed down. They said he will likely fluctuate from here on out, though since steroids are now gone and especially because Emery has to eventually do all of the work of breathing. So that was Emery's day in bay 2. I did apologize to the nurses. Erik and I really wanted to be there for the move so we could orient and Emery could be with us so it wasn't so odd. I am going tomorrow to meet our new family, and he won't smell so that's good. He's actually just right around the corner from bay 1 so he's still close enough to his family that they can come visit. Oh, and my baby is fat. Yep, that's what they said, my baby is on a baby diet. Actually, he's just gotten a little porky so they won't up his feeds for a little bit. I now have the fat smelly kid. Eh, no matter. He doesn't seem to care. He's got bad breath sort of, too, and he doesn't care about that either. He's pretty cute anyway and full of personality. His temper used to be an asset. We used to be so proud of it because we knew he was a fighter, but now it's actually detrimental. Take care! I'll let everyone know how our bay 2 weekend progresses.