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As I mentioned in a previous post Tadd had commented on how quiet everything was yesterday. Nothing like gettin thrown a curve ball to rattle our life once again. When I got to the floor this morning Andy was waiting outside of the NICU. He said they asked him to wait while they were putting an IV in Loen. I thought that was weird since she has been so stable and not needing anything by IV. I walked over to the viewing windows and saw the doctor by Loen’s incubator, another troubling sign. Finally I went to the entrance and tried to ring in (the NICU has double doors that are locked. You have to ring an intercom to get in.) I was asked to have a seat in the waiting room. All those things added up to something being wrong. Andy and I waited for a couple of minutes then Dr. Donnelly came in. She said that Loen’s morning labs showed signs of an infection. They repeated the blood test just to be sure and performed a spinal tap. Her morning x-ray showed something wrong with her intestines. The doctor said she was just getting ready to call me. I HATE getting calls from the doctor because they don’t call with good news. They have stopped with her feedings and are going to put her on IV nutrition and antibiotics. She said she didn’t want to say it was NEC before they got back lab results. God, I hate the word NEC. It took three weeks after Derby’s bout before he was back on breast milk and now Loen might have it. I called Tadd and he came up at noon. Loen looks lovely, not at all the way Derby looked when he got sick. I was talking to the twins nurse and she said the only sign was the increased white blood cells. Intolerance of feeding or not pooping is usually the first signs of NEC, which Loen hasn’t had. They may have got it very early and Loen will only need antibiotics. Her abdominal x-ray was repeated at 2pm. Tadd and I saw the doctor come out of the x-ray viewing room. I was going crazy waiting to hear the results. As we were waiting the surgeon comes in, man that scared me. I looked at the nurse and asked if he was there for Loen. Thank goodness he was only there to check on Derby, who is doing well right now (obviously it is Loen’s week to cause trouble). Finally Dr. Donnelly came over and said her x-ray looked better but not resolved. They are going to be conservative and not restart her feeds for a couple of days and keep her on the antibiotics. As we were talking I could see Loen’s legs kicking around, she was doing that the other day when it got close to the time to feed her. I noticed it was 3 pm (when she usually eats) and I mentioned that to the doctor. She said that was a good sign that she was getting fussy because she wasn’t eating, they would be worried if she was lethargic. She was quieter that usual but not lethargic.

One good thing was her oxygen levels were stable and better than they have been in awhile. Derby has been on room air for a good portion of today. We will take our victories where we can. We have to be thankful that the past week and a half has been good. Hopefully all goes well with our little princess.