Dying for Some Attention

Caroline was dying for some attention… On Monday night, she had a several spells of apnea and bradycardia (A’s & B’s). This means that she forgot to breathe and her heart rate dropped. From what I understand, this was her worst night after the beginning few days. They were pretty worried about her Tuesday morning and decided to check for an infection. Basically, a premature baby might act up like this if they had an infection like staph or meningitis. Since she is so small they want to catch an infection right away. In order to rule out an infection, they did a blood culture and spinal tap. These tests take a couple of days so they have her on antibiotics to be safe. I think we may have the results sometime tomorrow.

The doctors also noticed a bunch of “junk” in her airways and speculated that could be the cause of her problems. The CPAP machine is constantly pushing drainage into her throat and she cannot swallow like us. So, they suctioned some of the junk out. After that, the rest of Tuesday was pretty smooth.

This morning she had some bad A’s & B’s again. Her airway was clear (meaning no junk) so they did a chest x-ray and blood gas analysis. These came back okay… They could hear her wheezing and see that she was working hard to breathe, so they began to think her airway was slightly swollen from the breathing tube that she used to have. They gave her a small amount of steroids to help with swelling. After receiving steroids, we have not heard any wheezing and she has self corrected any apnea and only have one or two A’s and B’s. We hope she has a good night and is able to stay ventilator free.

Some other good news - We found out they did a head ultrasound and everything came back normal. She also continues to “eat” well. They have continued to increase her breast milk. She is now up to 10 ccs a feed.

I snapped a great picture of Caroline holding my finger this morning. We were waiting for her chest x-ray and she was so alert and wide eyed.