It was a rough weekend. Madison's infection is worse this time around. It's strange because she doesn't look as sick as she did a couple weeks ago when she was sick - she's very alert and overall looks really good considering how sick she is. But her blood work and testing is showing a more significant infection than the last time. She's on a triple cocktail of antibiotics and it seems to be working against the infection. Her CRP got as high as 4.8 on Saturday afternoon before going back down this morning - this of course is good news because it shows that the infection is not getting worse. But, the main problem right now is that yesterday afternoon the blood culture that they took on Friday night and were watching, turned positive. The good news (if we can call it that) with the blood culture turning positive is that now the infection that she has can be identified. The lab should now be able to identify the germ and then the doctors will be able to figure out exactly how to treat it and this guessing game about what type of infection she has can come to an end (we're waiting on those results). The bad news is that the infection now has the potential to spread. If the culture had stayed negative, it would be a good sign that the infection was localized to the stomach, but with the culture turning positive this means that the infection she has in her stomach has the potential to spread to other parts of her body - the biggest concern here being that the infection will spread (or has already spread) to her central nervous system. So, in order to test for that to ensure that it's caught early on is to test the fluid in her spinal cord, so yesterday afternoon she had to have a spinal tap - yes, a spinal tap on my little baby girl. The spinal tap testing is done in a similar fashion to a blood culture. They collected spinal fluid and they did a preliminary test to check for bacteria in the fluid (which thankfully came back negative) and now they watch the fluid to make sure that no organisms grow over time. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have more answers as to what exactly this infection is and we can make sure that it's being treated with the right medications. Another thing that we noticed tonight was that she spit up a little bit of what looked like old blood and mucus. This same exact thing happened last time towards the end of her sickness and the next day she ended up vomiting blood. So we asked to speak to the doctor and they suctioned out what was in her stomach and drew up some more old blood and mucus until it was all cleared out, so hopefully that little tummy cleansing will prevent anything more serious, like another ulcer. Since the antibiotics were started up on Friday night she's had much fewer apnea/bradycardia episodes, and again, her blood work is showing some steps in the right direction - so it seems that the antibiotics are doing the trick - hopefully for good this time.
Meanwhile, Melia is doing great. She basically has one foot out the door. Every doctor that examines her during morning rounds tells us that she'll be home very soon. She has been doing great with her breathing and hasn't needed the nasal cannula back on in a couple days now, not even when she's eating. Yesterday the doctor said that they could try giving her every feeding by bottle. She did really well with this yesterday afternoon and even last night as she took all of her feedings by bottle and finished them. But this morning she got really tired. She took her entire 8am feeding by bottle, but she desaturated towards the end and then she couldn't finish her 11am feeding, so they gave her the rest by tube and then she desaturated a bit during her 2pm bottle. Given Madison's illness, the nurse asked the doctor to do a blood panel just to make sure that these desaturations were a result of Melia being tired, and not something more, like an infection brewing. Fortunately, all of Melia's blood work came back normal, so she's infection free and nothing appears to be on the rise. So they just decided to give her a break with the bottle feedings to relieve any exhaustion that she feels. So her 5pm feeding was given by tube and then she did really well and finished her 8pm feeding without any problems (except a small brady/apnea episode as she took her last sip of her bottle). So for right now the doctor decided to go back to giving her every other feeding by bottle, thinking that maybe every feeding was a bit too much for her - but she'll work her way up to it quickly I'm sure. Earlier today I was thinking that she's be home before the end of the week - with her bottles going back to every other feeding, now I'm thinking it might be a few days more, but I'm thinking that she'll be home early next week. Once she can go 24 hours taking all of her feeding by bottle without any problems, they'll begin discharge testing and she'll be on her way out of there. She's doing really well and it seems she's very anxious to come home!
- Mike and Amanda
- I am a 29 year old mother of identical twin girls, Madison and Melia. They were born at 29 weeks, 1 day gestation and spent 8 weeks in the NICU at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, NJ. They hit 40 weeks gestation on August 20, 2009 and are now considered full term. Even though they are actually 11 weeks old, they are just now considered to be newborns. I started this blog as a way to keep friends and family informed on what was going on with the girls while they were in the NICU. It has turned into a keepsake and a therapuetic outlet. I hope that everyone continues to follow along and enjoys sharing this first hand experience of first-time parents of premature twin girls.
Words that I came to live by while on strict bedrest for 6 weeks during my pregnancy, 4 of which were spent in the hospital ~ Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination. Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.
