RSV SUCKS!!!

Lillian was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday, the 16th. Today is Saturday, the 20th and we're still here...

Thankfully Lillian was admitted when she was because she's been able to ride out this virus under the care of nurses and doctors! OMG. What an awful awful virus. Lillian seemed to be doing fine on Tuesday night and most of Wednesday. By Wednesday evening she took a turn. I think I had my first meltdown that night. She started getting really congested, but her oxygen saturation was still pretty good. 

By Thursday my little girl was wheezing and coughing and could barely breathe! The nurse that I had that morning didn't like how hard Lillian was working to breathe, so she talked to the doctor and they put her on direct oxygen through nasal cannulas.   Later that day, the doctor increased her oxygen input to 1 liter. Since then its been a roller coaster.

At 10 PM on Friday night, Lillian was working really hard to breathe. I called in the nurse and soon after she checked the baby, she had the doctor come in. First, they tried to do deep suction. With this, they hook up a hose with a little valve on it up to a vacuum suction.  This is just a stronger suction and can get more gunk out than a typical nasal ball syringe.  It helped, but he decided to give her a breathing treatment to see if it helped. The nurse and the doctor told me that breathing treatments are not typically done on newborns, especially newborns with RSV because most of the time they don't work.  They gave her a 1/2 dose of albuterol and it's been working! She gets a breathing treatment every 3 1/2 to 4 hours. 

Today she seems to be having a much better day! She started eating better yesterday too! Earlier today, the respiratory therapist tried to decreased her oxygen to .75 liters.  She did great on it for the first 4 hours. He came back for her next treatment and decided to decrease it to .50 liters. Well, within 30 minutes, Lillian was wheezing again and was breathing really hard.  So I called the nurse back in and had her take a listen. She agreed that Lillian was working way too hard for air.  So she increased the oxygen back to .75 liters.  Another 3 1/2 hours passed and the respiratory therapist came back for the next treatment.  When he was done, he decreased Lillian's oxygen to .50 liters and said he felt she would do fine through the night. This was at about 6:30PM.

At 9:00PM tonight, I called the nurse for a bottle for Lillian (since her nose is so stuffy, she's having a hard time latching for breast feeding so I've been pumping and bottle feeding).  The nurse came in and I told her that I was concerned that Lilly was once again working too hard to breathe. I am SOOOOO thankful that I have the nurse I have tonight! She works at Children's Hospital in Detroit in the ICU and asked me if she could do a deeper suction on Lilly. She said the nurses that work in this pediatric unit aren't comfortable performing this type of deep suction because they go pretty deep in the nose and down the throat to get out whatever gunk they can. I was nervous at first, but I figured, whatever they can do to get that crap out is worth a try! It was not fun watching her get this done, but oh my word! You can't even tell she's sick. She sounds great, looks great, and her numbers are awesome right now! Oxygen has been between 98 and 100 (still on .50 liters of oxygen) and her respiratory rate is in the 20's. Her heart rate has been around 137-140.

The therapist just came in to do her breathing treatment. She even thought Lillian sounded better. She was here last night with us too. Anyway, I'm going to go try and get some sleep before Lilly's next feeding or treatment.

Please keep my little one in your prayers. We're hoping to be home by Tuesday... we'll see!