Since the day the Gabrielle and Alaina were born, the doctors and nurses in the NICU have been telling us to be prepared for a roller coaster ride while the girls are there, meaning that there will be lots of highs and lows along the way. Luckily, we've had mostly highs so far and everyone is overjoyed by their progress, but yesterday we got our first taste of a low.
I went in for my morning visit expecting both Gabrielle and Alaina to be PICC line free and hoping I'd get the chance to hold them. Sure enough, Alaina's PICC line had come out and she was obviously enjoying having her arm free. But Gaby's line was still in. After we left Sunday night, she threw up her 6 o'clock feeding. One of the biggest risks the girls face right now is a condition called Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC), which is a gastrointestinal disease where infection or inflammation can cause damage to, or even the destruction of, their intestines. If the girls don't keep their feedings down, the doctors' main concern is making sure NEC isn't the reason why. After she got sick, Gaby's next four feedings were held until X-rays could be taken of her belly to make sure she didn't have NEC. The good news is by the time I arrived at 11:00 yesterday, they had ruled it out and started her feedings again with 10 cc's of milk, but now she has to tolerate 15 cc's again before the PICC line can come out. Even though this was a really small setback, it was still draining.
Jan and I went for our night visit and were happy to hear that Gaby had done well with her feedings and was up to 12 cc's, and the doctor was confident that her PICC line would come out overnight. But we had a new issue to deal with -- Alaina had thrown up her 3:00 feed and the X-ray technician was on his way down so they could check her for NEC. We watched as our little 2 pound baby was X-rayed and waited for the results to come back. During the wait, the doctor showed us Gabrielle's X-rays from earlier in the day. It turned out that the reason she had gotten sick was that her O.G. didn't go all the way down to her stomach so when she was being fed, the food couldn't make it where it needed to go. It wasn't her fault she had gotten sick and there wasn't anything wrong with her -- her feeding tube just wasn't in properly. She missed four feedings and her PICC line was still in because of something silly like that. Poor baby!
A few minutes later, Alaina's films came back and lo and behold -- her O.G. wasn't in her stomach either! Our girls love to pull at their wires and tubing (I had seen Alaina pull her O.G. almost all of the way out of her mouth earlier in the day) and now that they've both had vomiting incidents from the O.G. not being in place, I'm sure the nurses will be checking them much more closely from here on out.
So that was our day yesterday. In the end, both Gabrielle and Alaina were fine but the fear that comes along with any little setback, even something as simple as vomiting, is tortuous. The roller coaster analogy is right on.
One perk that came out of the crazy day was that little Alaina needed to be cleaned up while we were there and we got to see her pretty little face without all of the tubes and tape she normally has on. Here are some pictures:
I went in for my morning visit expecting both Gabrielle and Alaina to be PICC line free and hoping I'd get the chance to hold them. Sure enough, Alaina's PICC line had come out and she was obviously enjoying having her arm free. But Gaby's line was still in. After we left Sunday night, she threw up her 6 o'clock feeding. One of the biggest risks the girls face right now is a condition called Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC), which is a gastrointestinal disease where infection or inflammation can cause damage to, or even the destruction of, their intestines. If the girls don't keep their feedings down, the doctors' main concern is making sure NEC isn't the reason why. After she got sick, Gaby's next four feedings were held until X-rays could be taken of her belly to make sure she didn't have NEC. The good news is by the time I arrived at 11:00 yesterday, they had ruled it out and started her feedings again with 10 cc's of milk, but now she has to tolerate 15 cc's again before the PICC line can come out. Even though this was a really small setback, it was still draining.
Jan and I went for our night visit and were happy to hear that Gaby had done well with her feedings and was up to 12 cc's, and the doctor was confident that her PICC line would come out overnight. But we had a new issue to deal with -- Alaina had thrown up her 3:00 feed and the X-ray technician was on his way down so they could check her for NEC. We watched as our little 2 pound baby was X-rayed and waited for the results to come back. During the wait, the doctor showed us Gabrielle's X-rays from earlier in the day. It turned out that the reason she had gotten sick was that her O.G. didn't go all the way down to her stomach so when she was being fed, the food couldn't make it where it needed to go. It wasn't her fault she had gotten sick and there wasn't anything wrong with her -- her feeding tube just wasn't in properly. She missed four feedings and her PICC line was still in because of something silly like that. Poor baby!
A few minutes later, Alaina's films came back and lo and behold -- her O.G. wasn't in her stomach either! Our girls love to pull at their wires and tubing (I had seen Alaina pull her O.G. almost all of the way out of her mouth earlier in the day) and now that they've both had vomiting incidents from the O.G. not being in place, I'm sure the nurses will be checking them much more closely from here on out.
So that was our day yesterday. In the end, both Gabrielle and Alaina were fine but the fear that comes along with any little setback, even something as simple as vomiting, is tortuous. The roller coaster analogy is right on.
One perk that came out of the crazy day was that little Alaina needed to be cleaned up while we were there and we got to see her pretty little face without all of the tubes and tape she normally has on. Here are some pictures:
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