Roller Coaster

Eli gave us a little scare yesterday. He was "desatting" all day (that's when the percentage of oxygen in his blood drops) and he had at least two bradycardias (when his heart rate drops sharply). His doctors and nurses tell us the bradies are usually caused by Eli forgetting to breathe; they say it's a normal symptom of prematurity. The nurses all remain so calm, but as a parent that's hard to do when the alarms are going off, literally, left and right. Also, through reading, we've learned that bradies and desats can also be a symptom of infection or other respiratory problems. So that doesn't help with our level of calm.

Back home after having spent the stressful day in the NICU, I decided, at about 9:30 p.m., to call in to check on Eli (the unit encourages parents to do this). Eli's nurse for the night, Julie, told me his condition remained the same and that she'd just alerted the attending doctor, who was considering at that very moment whether to do a complete blood count (CBC). While I was on the phone, the doctor decided to go ahead with the test even though one was ordered for the morning. Julie told me if I called back at 11 p.m. she would have the results. When 11 rolled around, I called, but Julie was busy doing an X-ray (on our Eli, it turned out). She finally called me back at 11:30 to say that the CBC had come back normal, indicating Eli had a good red blood cell count and no infection. They were just waiting for the X-ray results. More breath holding, but, fortunately, this time only for 15 minutes; I called back and learned the X-ray was normal! Finally I could sleep soundly.

They told us there would be days like this—"It's a roller coaster," we keep hearing—but it's hard to imagine when Eli is sailing through day after day with no major problems. Yesterday is not what you'd call a "setback," but it sure was stressful. He's still very small, and we just have to keep in mind that most of these kinds of things are normal parts of development. After all, he was supposed to be immersed in amniotic fluid at this point, not having to breathe on his own or really do anything except grow.