"Code Blue"

These are not words that you want to hear in person. And you especially don't want to hear them with respect to your baby. But that's what happened today.

Caley had a rough night and morning, with more and more apnea spells (not as many bradycardia events, but still a few). They changed her to continuous feeds, in case she was having trouble with reflux, and also increased her caffeine again. But by this afternoon, she was still having trouble, and they decided to put her back on the CPAP mask.

Marie was in the room, along with Nurse Janelle and the respiratory person Andrea (don't know if she's a doctor or a nurse or what, but she knows her stuff), when they were switching Caley from her cannula to the CPAP. They were "bagging" her in the meantime, when her stats suddenly dropped. And they didn't come back up. And she started turning blue. And then Marie left the room. And then she heard "Code Blue, Room 50."

The next hour is something of a blur, but the whole thing was extremely scary.

The doctor thinks that a build-up of mucus in Caley's trachea may have caused her to stop breathing. We knew she had been needing a lot more suctioning that normal, and perhaps it was even worse than the nurses and doctors realized at first. They're running some tests to see if she has any kind of infection in her lungs causing the excess mucus, and we should get the results tomorrow. The one good thing to report is that Caley's heart never stopped beating.

But Caley is back on a ventilator to help her breathe. Her lungs were largely collapsed, so she needs that support for now. They also paused her feeds for a little while, but hopefully can resume them later tonight. Everyone assures us this is a common setback with preemies - that their little lungs and the muscles that help them breathe just get tired and need a little more support. We're hoping she'll only be on the ventilator for a few days, and then work back up to the CPAP and then the cannula again. For now, though, we could use all of your prayers and well wishes to get Caley (and us) through this setback.