After her not-breathing episode, the nurses carried Exie off to the Newborn ICU, or the NICU (they pronounce it “nik-yu”). Susan was instructed to return to her room since she was still in pretty bad shape from the delivery and needed to rest. I went to the NICU with Exie. Lots of those spooky baby-bubble bassinets in there, many of them housing babies with too many tubes going in and out of them. Ugh.
too many wires
At this point, Exie seemed like she was doing better, so they hooked her up to a couple monitors, one that measured her heartbeat and another that measured the level of oxygen in her blood. They said that they were primarily watching for “de-sat” episodes, meaning times when her blood was not saturated with enough oxygen. Over the next 4 hours or so, Exie had 5 or 6 of these episodes. The monitor would start beeping not-very-urgently if she went below a certain level, and then much more urgently if she went below a second, lower level. The nurse assigned to her would rush over and basically wake her up and jostle her and get her to start breathing again.
These were tough hours, obviously. I kept running back and forth between Susan and Exie. Lisan was also helping with Susan. Susan managed to sleep for a while, Li slept for a bit in the lounge (poor thing), and I grabbed a few hours on a cot in our room. This was not what we had envisioned: our baby in another room, on another floor. :(
They had decided to do a battery of tests on Exie to find out what might be causing her apnea episodes. Possible culprits included her heart, her lungs, her brain (i.e., possible seizures), and some others. To be honest, it was difficult to keep track of everything.
Fortunately, after those first few hours, she didn’t have any more episodes. This was obviously a big relief, but we still needed to do all the tests. First round tests on her heart checked out, as did those on her lungs and brain. Apparently if the apnea was seizure related, she would have had a far-off or odd look on her face during the episodes, and this wasn’t the case. Phew.
Sometime in the early morning I called a few family members and friends to give them the update. At this point, we were still too tired and scared to start feeling optimistic, but at least her episodes had stopped. Everybody was very supportive of course, but it was still hard to talk about it all.
newborn ICU
After her not-breathing episode, the nurses carried Exie off to the Newborn ICU, or the NICU (they pronounce it “nik-yu”). Susan was instructed to return to her room since she was still in pretty bad shape from the delivery and needed to rest. I went to the NICU with Exie. Lots of those spooky baby-bubble bassinets in there, many of them housing babies with too many tubes going in and out of them. Ugh.
too many wires
At this point, Exie seemed like she was doing better, so they hooked her up to a couple monitors, one that measured her heartbeat and another that measured the level of oxygen in her blood. They said that they were primarily watching for “de-sat” episodes, meaning times when her blood was not saturated with enough oxygen. Over the next 4 hours or so, Exie had 5 or 6 of these episodes. The monitor would start beeping not-very-urgently if she went below a certain level, and then much more urgently if she went below a second, lower level. The nurse assigned to her would rush over and basically wake her up and jostle her and get her to start breathing again.
These were tough hours, obviously. I kept running back and forth between Susan and Exie. Lisan was also helping with Susan. Susan managed to sleep for a while, Li slept for a bit in the lounge (poor thing), and I grabbed a few hours on a cot in our room. This was not what we had envisioned: our baby in another room, on another floor. :(
They had decided to do a battery of tests on Exie to find out what might be causing her apnea episodes. Possible culprits included her heart, her lungs, her brain (i.e., possible seizures), and some others. To be honest, it was difficult to keep track of everything.
Fortunately, after those first few hours, she didn’t have any more episodes. This was obviously a big relief, but we still needed to do all the tests. First round tests on her heart checked out, as did those on her lungs and brain. Apparently if the apnea was seizure related, she would have had a far-off or odd look on her face during the episodes, and this wasn’t the case. Phew.
Sometime in the early morning I called a few family members and friends to give them the update. At this point, we were still too tired and scared to start feeling optimistic, but at least her episodes had stopped. Everybody was very supportive of course, but it was still hard to talk about it all.