06/23/2007

Phew. We had a little scare with Emery yesterday. Nothing really exciting happened in rounds, except the docs started saying that it was time to try bottle feeding. We can try to bottle feed once per shift. I was excited! What things 'normal' parents take for granted. Anyway, when I left rounds I could hardly wait. They were going to let me try it right then, but he was breathing too fast, so next time was the plan. Well, Emery was fine when I left him. Then, when i came back 2 hours later I saw the nurse in the hall and she said, 'he's upset.' Boy oh boy was that an understatement! He was screaming and crying, worse than he did with his kidney stone or with needle sticks or anything they had done to him thus far. I picked him up and he was just miserable. Then, his screaming turned to wailing. It was the most horrible sound I had ever heard. He got Ativan and morphine and *finally* fell asleep, though fitfully. He got his regularly scheduled morphine dose as well, and then something strange happened. His respirations (breaths per minute) dropped into the teens (where they are usually at 60 breaths per minute, his were about 12 to 15 -- which would be fine for an adult and certainl not for a baby). They were also fairly shallow. His saturations started dropping, too, down into the high 70s. He looked horribly pale. His heart dropped, too, down into the 90s.. which again is a normal resting heart for a baby but Emery's are usually about in the 150s, 120s when resting. He was hardly moving. I took his temperature and it was 35.1 (I don't know how that translates into degrees Fahrenheit, but low for Emery is 36, 37 is the average for a regular baby. We put him back in bed and swaddled him (again, very strange for Emery as he likes to be cooler and his body temperature is always a little warm). He felt clammy and looked pale. He was under several blankets and his temperature didn't come up, and he didn't move at all as we were putting him in bed and swaddling him, so the nurse brought the warmer in and the resident decided to start broad-spectrum antiobiotics last night. He had to get a catheter specimen of urine for urinalysis and culture, and he didn't cry at all when they put the catheter in or pushed on his bladder to get a collection. He did cry with the needle sticks, though. His CBC and CRP came back normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Those are just tests to check for infection, but the cultures won't grow anything for at least 2 to 3 days. The CBC and CRP are sometimes early indicators of an infection. I'm a little worried it may be a virus, and there was talk of putting him back on CPAP for some more respiratory support. I sat up in his room with him until he slept, and again his saturations dropped down again, but when Erik and I went to check on him this morning he was awake and grunting and his temperature was back to normal. His nurse said it might have just been a bad day for Emery, but it hit a nerve with Erik and me. This is going to be our life for a long time. I am grateful he's here in the hospital, but what about when he comes home? Does this mean that doctors will take me more serioiusly because I have a sick baby? Now, I'm really afraid. I realized how fragile he is, and how easily we could lose him. I mean, I always knew that, but we've come so far I don't want to lose him to infection. The hall across from us has a bunch of sick babies with contact precautions and I woke up with a sore throat yesterday. Will I live in fear always wondering about this? I think that being the mom to a preemie is a little harder than what we expected. Emery is still on high-flow nasal cannula, though, and he does look better this morning. Let's hope it was just a fluke and be grateful he's still under 24-hour supervision!