A stressful day...

Yesterday, I walked into Cooper's pod and his pulse ox was 64 and no one was there to respond. A pager is supposed to go off anytime that his pulse ox falls below 80 but no pagers are going off. I start ripping off his blankets to rile him up because that gets the oxygen back moving and nothing. The nurse takes over and puts a little oxygen mask close to his face (called a blow by machine) and is thumping his foot to get him to cry. By this time he is this wierd whitish color and he is limp. Do I need to tell you how I was feeling at this moment? After what felt like forever but was probably more like a minute, he was back to his normal self.

WHY THE HELL WASN'T THE PAGER WORKING??????!!!!!!!!!!??????????? And, why was I the first to respond?????

After the fear wore off the anger moved in...

The nurses spent the rest of the day trying to reassure me that they were working on the pager system but that they had his monitor pulled up in every baby's pod and that this would never happen again.

Literally, I'm there at his bedside for 8-10 hours a day...and, I still have guilt that I'm not there enough...and, now that guilt has multiplied. How long was my boy having problems breathing??? They assure me that it had just started happening when I walked into his pod...well, thank God then that I walked in at that exact moment!

It appears that he's just having reflux issues so they have dropped his by mouth feedings to 2 times a day (baby step back) and are going to space his NG feedings over a 90 minute span instead of a 60 minute span. Hopefully, these two steps will stop this from every happening again. His pulse ox dropping is normal when it goes into the high 80's when he's stretching and pooping because he's working harder but not in the 60's...

So, I've gotta go get ready to go to the hospital...