March 27, 2011 - 23 Days Old

It was a busy day today with church and home teaching. Aiden's doctor called Amaraa this morning and updated her on his condition. The cultures they had run to test for pneumonia had come back negative. Because of that, they cut him back from four antibiotics to one. She said that his blood count had come in low, so they were going to give him a blood transfusion. They had put in the "pick" line catheter and the arterial line last night, so they have been able to use those lines for all the medications and blood draws.

I finished everything I had to do by around 4:00 PM and we headed over to the hospital to visit Aiden. It was a bit of a shock to see all the new lines in his little body. He has more tubes and lines in him now than he has ever had. They had started the blood transfusion just before we got there. The doctor had told the nurse to try starting him on feedings again, so she had pulled out the suction tube that was suctioning the air out of his belly to do that. As she was getting ready to start the feeding, she noticed that Aiden's belly was puffing up again. They did an x-ray and saw that the air in his tummy was back. They saw that his bladder was big and full and that it was pushing up on the bottom loop of the intestine, so they decided to catheterize him to drain his bladder so that the bladder muscle could rest and take the pressure off the intestines. They didn't expect that to solve the gas problem entirely, but they thought it might help. The neonatologist said that the problem is probably the result of an infection of some sort, but they are not sure what type of infection he has yet. They sent some cultures and blood to the lab, but the full results won't be in for a couple of days.

Amaraa wasn't feeling very well today, so we only stayed with Aiden for a couple of hours. As we were coming down in the elevator, there was a couple being discharged from the hospital with their new baby. It's so hard not to be jealous of those parents. We wish it could be us taking our healthy baby home with us. It is a miracle that Aiden made it at all, since Amaraa started bleeding at 10 weeks. We know we have been incredibly blessed. And we know that he's in the NICU because he is sick and needs to be in the NICU. But it sure doesn't make it much easier. It's hard to put those selfish desires to have him home with us aside and put reality into perspective.





The "pick" line

The arterial line