Dreamers search for the sunny side

I think I thought of two pounds as some magical number...like if Kenna just hit two pounds, everything would be great...she would be out of the woods.  Unfortunately, life is not like that in the NICU.  Shoot, life is not like that anywhere.

So, yesterday morning started with my normal call to the hospital.  And I was pretty much told that Kenna was doing reasonably well.  She had a poopy diaper overnight with some blood and so the feedings had been discontinued.  I had no real reason to worry since we had been through this before and discovered that...there was nothing to worry about. 

Only this time...there was.

We were busy all morning and my shower was delayed until 1pm.  Yeah.  That late.  And it was during that shower that I had a call from the former nurse doom who has since become my favorite nurse.  (I'm attributing that dark period of our relationship to her morning sickness.  She's having a little girl in July.)  I called back immediately, after feeling incredibly guilty for showering at all.  That's how it is with me.

So the nurse told me that Kenna seemed worse, that there was an ugly residual from her last feeding (they suck out her stomach contents to see that she is digesting her meals before administering a new one) and that her blood sugars were really high...like twice the high end of the normal limits high.

And I told her I'd be there as soon as I could.  First I finished what I was doing.  And then, I made it to the hospital where I saw how sick my baby was.  She didn't look horrible, but she wasn't her feisty little self.  She opened one eye to look at me, then that was the last I saw of her...or rather...she saw of me.  I was there for another two hours.

I was there while they took x-rays and ran a battery of tests on her...drawing blood, taking cultures from her endotracheal tube, and trying desperately to get a urine sample through catheterization.  It wasn't pretty.  None of it was easy.  And she was sluggish at best during every bit of it.

There is a reason I worked hard to get the primary nurses I wanted.  Having primaries means that when something isn't right with a baby, the nurse knows the baby well enough to catch it early.  Like yesterday.

Kenna has NEC (necrotizing entercolitis).  It can be fatal.  It can require surgery. And sometimes, if you are super lucky, it can be caught early enough that it can be treated with antibiotics.  We'll see where we fall over the next few days.  The antibiotics are running now.   And once Kenna is feeling a bit better, she'll be giving the nurses a really hard time for not feeding her.  I'm looking forward to that.

So the nurse and I were talking post diagnosis...

me: Well, just think of all the milk I'll be able to store over the next few weeks.

She smiled at me.

nurse: And look at you finding the positive.  Amazing.

me: That's what I do.  Just give me a minute to process and I can come up with something.

nurse: That's what Kenna needs.

I know this.  And that's why we do what we do.  That's why we are the way we are. 

Hang in there, baby girl.  You have a whole lot of people rooting for you.