Update - Mostly Leah

Hi All,

As some of you have heard our little Leah has been hospitalized since Monday night. She had a cold that really came out over the weekend and spent most of Sunday whining. I stopped on my way home Monday night to get Pedialyte and Tylenol. When I got home I fed her then was sitting and rocking her in the babies' room. I realized how fast she was breathing and how hard she was breathing. I petted the top of her head and realized that her "soft spot" was indented (a sign of dehydration), then I looked at her neck and saw it "pulling" in when she breathed - a sign of respiratory distress. I called to Jon and we put Golda's pulse oximeter on her to see what her blood oxygen level was. It started at 89% and went down to 79%! That was when I grabbed the phone and called the pediatrician. She called back and sent us to the ER.

They gave her two albuterol treatments, took chest x-rays then gave her racemic norephinephrine. That was the only thing that got her oxygen levels up. They decided to admit her and give her some oxygen "blow-by" (a tube blowing oxygen is put near her face so it can blow by her nose since little ones tend not to tolerate the nasal cannula). Her oxygen levels have been falling too low when she is asleep and outside the oxygen tent (89%-90%) and are at the lower limit of what they will consider acceptable (93-94%) when she is awake and outside the tent. We were hoping that she could come home today, but her levels didn't improve enough so they wanted to watch her for another day. Hopefully tomorrow will be our lucky day.

Given all this with Leah we figured we should get Micah's cold looked at so Jon took him to the pediatrician on Tuesday. In light of Leah's outcome they decided to be proactive and put Micah on Albuterol nebulizer treatment at home. He was somewhat wheezy but nowhere near as bad as Leah was. The treatments have done the trick and he seems to be doing better now. Mind you, his appetite hasn't been affected at all!

Golda was home last weekend so they have been watching her very closely. So far so good - no wheezing for her, just some snottiness and a bit of coughing. They say that she is doing okay. It stinks though because we don't want to bring her home this weekend and further expose her. Grr. Oh and she is now 11 pounds 14 ounces.

Okay, that's it here. I have to go switch off with Jon at the hospital. I will let you know how Leah is doing tomorrow.