The One…

These are the kind of posts I don’t like to do. Having a sick kiddo is hard for any parent, but when you have a micro-preemie the anxiety is elevated.

Liv has had a cold off and on since around Christmas. It wasn’t impacting her too much. She had the sniffles and a slight cough, but there were no respiratory issues, which I had been so thankful for. The hard thing with Liv is she doesn’t have a big reserve. She already barely hits the minimum ounces for hydration, so if she has too many low days in a row, that could be an issue. The thing that sent her over the edge this time though was the diarrhea (sorry if that is TMI). She went from being OK to very lethargic pretty quickly last Thursday. Thursdays are my day in the office, so around lunchtime I checked in with my mom and she said Olivia was not doing well, so I got in my car to come home. When I got home, she was unrecognizable. I threw everything in the car and then we were on our way to the hospital. At first we were going to head down to Sac, just because we know people there and they have all the specialties, but then we decided to go to Roseville because of how bad Liv looked. If you know me, you know that I am a rule follower. Well, the Mama Bear definitely came out in me. I was definitely going over the speed limit, but being safe. And I also ran a few red lights (I stopped at them like stop signs and then went). Once we got to the hospital it took a bit to get seen, which I was highly annoyed by because when we check in, Liv looked semi-alert, but it was not real. She couldn’t keep her eyes open or her head up. When we got called to check her vitals they saw her lethargy and then brought us back immediately.

From the moment the doors opened to the trauma area I went to another place. It was like being back in the NICU on the worst day. But throughout the whole ordeal, my mind would go from panic and crying to numbness. There was no control of my nervous system. Seeing your child that fought so hard look so lifeless. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. The staff at Roseville were great. They got the IV in Liv on the first shot, which is almost unheard of on a baby that is dehydrated. They immediately took her blood sugar and it was 25! It should be above 60. Everyone went into hypermode. Once she got some fluids, she started to perk up. We spent a couple of hours in the trauma bay, and then they moved us to one of the ER rooms until a room was ready on the Pediatric/Postpartum floor. Our room ended up being ready early, so we didn’t have to stay down there too long.

The room was as nice as it could be. We had a crib as well as a bed and an uncomfy sleep recliner. Hospitals need to work harder at finding furniture that is easy to disinfect but also comfortable for people who have to stay there. Especially for multiple nights. If this ever happens again, I think we will just bring an air mattress. The next day they kept Olivia on fluids until around noon. Before we could go home we had to see if she could eat on her own and that her blood sugar would stay up on it’s own. If it didn’t, then we would need to do more tests. Luckily, she did well with maintaining her blood sugar, even overnight without eating and ate OK. So we left the hospital late Saturday afternoon.

When we got home Liv did OK, not the best but better than not eating at all. But on Sunday her intake was limited and she has two diahrrea diapers in the morning and two in the early afternoon. We called the advice nurse and she advised us to go back in. So we packed everything up, in case we were to be admitted again and this time we headed down to Sacramento. Nothing against Roseville. They were great, but we have more connections to Sac and there are more specialties there in case we needed anything else. We got back pretty quickly but then we had to wait because they wanted to not only get blood sugar but also check her electrolytes, and they needed to do a blood gas. We are very familiar with those because of the NICU. But only RTs can do that. So they called up to get an RT from the NICU. We were really hoping it would be someone we knew and we ended up getting to see two Respiratory Therapists we knew. Unfortunately it took a couple of tries to get enough blood for the test. The tests came back fine, so there really wasn’t anything they could do. They did give us a prescription for Zofran. We went home hoping and praying she would get better. And better did she get. Everyday last week she improved. No more diarrhea since last Sunday and her appetite was coming back. We are so thankful it ended up being a shorter virus.

Since our last post here are some updates on Livy:

PT/Child Development: We are still having regular appointments, every other week with them. They are loving Olivia’s progress. We are still working on walking, she is just taking her sweet time.
Speech: We are working on eating more volume in solids. She finally got the straw cup down, so now we are working on her wanting to drink more from it. Because let me tell you…mom is done with the bottle, lol.
We had an appointment last week with nutrition. Livy hit her growth goals. Still on the low end, but even with being sick she gained, which in many cases you see babies lose weight.

February is a big month for memories of last year: