Good-bye NICU, Hello WordPress

Now that we're home from the NICU for the second time, we hope never to be admitted to it again. So it's time to move on from the NICU and from our NICU blog. Because so many of you had trouble leaving comments on this blog, we decided to move to Wordpress. 

You can find Caley's new blog at http://caleyshouse.wordpress.com. Let us know if the comments work better on this one!

And to bid our NICU phase farewell, here's a little video montage of Caley's first 86 days in the NICU.

(If you have trouble with the embedded video, try to link directly to youtube here.)

Jiggety jog

We're home again (home again). And terrified that something bad could happen again. But we and Caley are more comfortable at home, and since there's nothing apparently wrong with Caley (other than a little cold, but she's asymptomatic), here we are.

We're pretty sleep-deprived right now, and don't have much else to report. Good night from Kirk, Caley & Jerry!

still here

Sorry for the delayed update -- it's been more than a little hectic being back in the NICU, and not nearly as comfortable without our private room or primary nurses. Caley has mostly been fine since we got here, though she did have a couple of bradycardic events again, which earned us some more time in the hospital.

The only thing "wrong" with Caley since we've been here is that she tested positive for rhinovirus -- the common cold. So she has a little bit of a cold, but really isn't showing any symptoms. Hard to know if that played a part in Thursday's event or not. What we do think caused it was some perfect storm of eating too much, straining to poop, and refluxing all at the same time, and then not being able to manage the results. (Thank goodness that Daddy, her hero, was there to help her out.) The doctors and nurses have helped us work out some ways to manage all of those relatively common problems a little better, and hopefully nothing like this will ever happen again.

So we're still in the NICU, but nothing significant is going on. Caley doesn't have any bruising or soreness from receiving CPR, and we've got a plan for avoiding it ever again. Hope to be back home soon!

sure glad we took that CPR class...

Caley gave us quite a scare this afternoon. Mommy noticed that she was spitting up (which she often does, just like any baby with reflux) and went to clear her mouth, when she noticed that Caley didn't look quite right. After picking her up and getting no response, Mommy saw that Caley was turning blue. Daddy started CPR, and it probably took a minute before Caley blinked and started crying and noticeably breathing again.

About then, the paramedics got to the house. By the time they examined her, Caley was breathing fine and her heart rate was fine (though she was pretty pale), but because we did CPR, they took her to the emergency room at Children's to get checked out. Everything looked fine there too, but they went ahead and re-admitted Caley to the hospital for observation overnight.

So we're back in the NICU tonight, and not in our comfy private room. It's going to be a long night ahead, but hopefully Caley will be just fine and back home tomorrow. We'll update everyone tomorrow.