NICU Exhaustion

Our oldest, Kayden had a cough about 1.5 weeks ago and gave it to mommy and we coughed a lot and had bad headaches. On Saturday, McCoy came down with a cough and stayed up all night Saturday and Sunday uncomfortable and screaming constantly. I called the Dr on Monday and told him McCoy's symptoms and he told me to take him to the ER. I personally thought the Dr was over-reacting, but he wouldn't see him, so I had no choice but to take him to ER. When we first arrived in ER, they took his temperature and vitals and everything was normal. We waited 4 hours to see a doctor and he slept in my arms the whole time - the only time he'd really slept in the past 2 days. Once the doctor saw us, they took a chest x-ray that was normal and did an RSV test that came back negative. The nurse came in and said that they were finishing up paperwork so we could go home, but just wanted to check his temp one last time. This time, it was 102.2 and she immediately said, "Nevermind, any newborn with a temp over 100 immediately gets admitted to NICU." I called Chad and he and another guy came and gave him a blessing before they had us moved up to NICU.

In NICU, they did another RSV test - again negative and after other tests, began tracking/fixing the following issues: they took about 3 different cultures to test for bacterial infection, took blood and found that he was severely anemic and almost gave him a transfusion until I explained spherocytosis to the doctor, he was dehydrated and also had a heart rate at about 220. They immediately started antibotics for a bacterial infection in case the cultures came back positive, hooked him up to an IV to get him fluids and continued to track his red blood cells. Also, his white blood cell count was high, which meant he was fighting an infection and the next day the count had almost doubled and there was a fear of menangitis, so a spinal tap was done to rule that out as it is common in sick babies as they can not localize their illnesses well and they seem to spread with a scare of spreading to the brain. The spinal tap came back showing that it was not menangitis and gave us a big sigh of relief.

That same day (2 days after being admitted), his symptoms started looking better. His fever had finally come down, his heart rate had come down, white blood cells had normalized and he was finally back to his calm and alert self - eating well and just being a good baby. His red blood cell level is still low which is a tell-tale sign of spherocytosis, but they are not worried about it, as it is slowly increasing. Only one of the cultures had anything on it and it showed a specific type of influenza. As of Thursday afternoon, McCoy was officially labeled STABLE. What a relief!! He will be staying in the hospital until Tuesday to complete the full 7 day antibiotics. He is a happy and content baby now and relishes in the time we are able to be with him.