September 28, 2009

Today Charlotte is 7 weeks old and 3 lbs 4 oz.

This morning Charlotte's nurse confirmed what I was worried about - that she wasn't ready to leave the NICU. The nurses felt that as soon as she desatted, as she's been doing, she would be sent back to the NICU.

It took until around noon when Charlotte decided to prove us right. She started working very hard to breathe and her skin was retracting from the effort. After upping her O2 and increasing the flow on her cannula without a change in her labored breathing, the nurse asked the doctors to take a look. Interestingly, the on-call resident and fellow thought her x-ray clearly showed pneumonia, however, the attending came up behind them as they explained this to me and commented on how great the x-ray looked. Hmmm...yay for multiple opinions.

Blood tests confirmed she does not have an infection (thank goodness), but that her red blood cells are lower than what they'd like to see. She may need another infusion, but the preference is that she start to make her own blood so we're going to see how she does tomorrow.

So, changes for today: Her feeds are up to 28 mls (one feed was skipped at 6 p.m. due to her labored breathing) and she's back on the high-flow cannula at 2.5 liters.

I'll try to take a couple pictures tomorrow to spruce up this blog...