Rough Day for Paige

Today was definitely our hardest day yet.  When you see the NICU on your caller ID, it can never be good.  They called us this morning to let us know that Paige's blood culture from yesterday afternoon grew bacteria, which indicates that she has a blood stream infection.  I knew something was off with her yesterday.  We called several times last night after getting home to check in because I just had a feeling that she wasn't right.  Some of it is me being a nurse (more sleepy, vomiting, distended belly, frequent bradys).  The other part is me being mom (I just had a bad feeling).  We were reassured yesterday by her CBC and unremarkable abdominal xray, but I still wasn't comfortable sleeping last night.  In some ways, at least this gives us an answer.

So what does all of this mean?  For Paige it meant repeat cultures and more labs this morning.  It also meant a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) and the start of broad spectrum antibiotics.  She will need a procedure to place a central line (longer term IV) since these antibiotics will be needed for a while and her feeding is obviously set way back (Andrew had one of these placed last week since we knew he'd need longer term IV nutrition).  They won't attempt to place this line until they know what type of infection they are dealing with though, so that will be Wednesday at the earliest.  The good news is that she was already a little more perky when I was with her this afternoon.  Her bradys were also much less frequent than yesterday.  We are just very hopeful that we caught this infection very early and are already on the mend with the first couple doses of antibiotics.

As for Andrew, he didn't make today much easier either.  We finally restarted his feeds while I held him this afternoon and then proceeded to start vomiting again. The thought is that his gut just isn't ready yet.  I guess time will tell...

Of course all of this happened the day that Jack returned to work.  It's definitely hard to not be there when things happen and I know he's very anxious to get to the hospital after work to see them.   At least when you are there you can see what is going on for yourself.  The highlight of my day was that I got to hold Andrew for an hour today -- they don't let you do that very often!  We are hoping Paige is stable enough tonight to get to hold her.  That makes everything a lot easier.