Speed Bump

Just when you think you can take a deep breath and entertain the idea of bringing your sweet baby home, a reality check makes you so thankful that you are right where you should be!

We'd been riding an emotional high after watching Bohdy take to the bottle so well, seeing him gain good weight and even talking with all the doctors about discharge in a couple more weeks. Then Tuesday night the nurse found blood in Bohdy's diaper during his 6 p.m. cares. We kept calling his night nurse that night to check on him and things sounded worse each time. He had several bloody diapers and didn't seem to be feeling well. They ordered x-rays and blood cultures and started him on antibiotics. When I got there on Wednesday morning and peeked in his isolette it was shocking...like my baby was replaced with a fake doll...pale and gray and limp. I was a bit of a wreck. OK, more than a bit. The worst fear was NEC (Necrotizing enterocolitis), a condition where the intestines become infected and can begin to die. This can be extremely serious, even fatal, so the WONDERFUL doctors and nurses were extremely proactive and aggressive in figuring out what was going on. His x rays were encouraging and showed no obvious signs of NEC, thank goodness.

They took him off all his food and put him on IV fluids. He has since showed great signs of improvement and his blood work this morning continues to support the doctors' suspicion that he has a GI virus. He hasn't had a poopy diaper in 2 days since he hasn't had any food, so we are still waiting to see if the bloody stool has resolved itself. He is more sleepy than normal but he started back on a minimal volume of milk yesterday and seems to be tolerating it well. Steve was able to feed him a bottle of 12 mL of plain milk ("sans fortifier") last night at 9:00 and I fed him one today at 3:00, so we are getting back on that enjoyable track! And he's an impressive 3 pounds 13 ounces today, so even his growth wasn't stunted by this ordeal!! I took these pictures right after his bottlefeeding today. Isn't he kissable??




Thanks to everyone for the calls, emails, text messages and prayers. We want this lil' guy home by Christmas and so far, that's still the plan!