a night in the ER

After a week of Coy not quite acting himself, we took him to the ER last night on the advice of our Pedi.

Last week, he became WAY more fussy than usual for him; I attributed this to switching from breast milk (I stopped pumping 8 weeks ago and we just ran out of milk) to formula and thought he had gas/reflux/constipation issues. I thought he maybe had some colic or we needed to switch his formula. Some feedings were great, some were miserable. Some he would take his 4 oz, some only 2 oz. He then had some projectile vomit and began refluxing way more than before. He's also had some diarrhea and then there's times he's straining (poor buddy). I talked to his GI doc and they said we should try a different formula, Enfamil Gentlease or Nutramagen. We tried these, and he did not want anything to do with them. (We see his GI doc tomorrow.

Last week, for the first time in the past 8 weeks, he had a sleeping brady. I figured that was strange and didn't get too excited over it, but then it happened again the next night. And, after the third consecutive night, I decided last Friday to bring him in to the Pedi. She noticed he was breathing faster than normal and decided we should get a chest xray. We had that done, looked normal, no pneumonia or fluid on his lungs. She told us to just keep a close eye on him over the weekend, if things worsened, we should bring him in to the ER. Saturday he was having a good day, seemed to be okay. However, on Sunday, he was only taking about 2 oz and that was us practically forcing him to eat. He also had another brady, and was having more apneas than usual. The apnea monitor is highly unreliable, but I did all my quality control checks and all seemed to be working. So, I usually take the alarms with a grain of salt because they are false alot, but these seemed to be accurate from what I could tell.

Last night, after his bottle, he was breathing super fast and shallow. He was also cool and clammy. I am always concerned with possible pneumonia because of aspirating (not that he gags or chokes and his feeds are thickened) but maybe he has some micro-aspiration?? I told Chris I was going to page his Pedi, but before I could even do it, she called us. She said she'd been thinking about Coy all weekend and just felt that we should bring him in and have everything checked out. She was concerned about possible fluid overload since he's gained so much weight, so quickly. Two weeks ago he was 7lb14oz, last night he was 9 lb5.5 oz.

So we brought him in. The nurses/doctors looked at me like I was crazy when I whipped out his 10 page discharge summary from his NICU stay and explained everything that was happening. They seemed a bit overwhelmed. (And of course, he's smiling, chewing on his pacifier, breathing normally, energetic, loving life while the ER docs are looking at him!) They looked at me and said "he looks good to us" like a was a bit crazy. He had another chest xray, blood culture, urine culture, and CBC done. The xray looked a "little" bit wet, so they decided to give him some Lasix. The CBC was completely normal. Of course, we wont have the culture results back until tomorrow or so. We were there for about 6 hours, and in those 6 hours, there's no telling how many germs we were all exposed to. Hopefully, we don't end up back there from something Coy contracted last night. ERs are really a catch 22.

We got home about 445am, and as soon as he's back in his bed, the apneas and bradys start again. I'm so confused and a bit frustrated. We will see his Pedi tomorrow to check on the culture results. We also see his GI doc tomorrow; I am thinking his reflux meds need to be changed. Maybe all this is stemming from his reflux??

Please pray for healing our sweet angel. Pray for him to pass this virus/bug/infection and for him to stay healthy and well!

(If anyone has any ideas of what's going on with him, feel free to comment!)