Scary Night In The E.R.

Saturday morning around 2 am Leighton woke up coughing. Mitch and I could not get her to settle, after about 40 minutes of continuous coughing we decided that I would take her to the emergency room while Mitch stayed home with a sleeping Lennox.

As soon as we got to the hospital the nurses took us into a room to look Leighton over. After consulting with the on call doctor they decided to keep her (and myself) till morning. In the meantime they administered a nebulizer and amoxicillin. The nebulizer did wonders and for the first time since 2 am Leigh was able to stop coughing and went right to sleep as the poor girl was exhausted. She was running a bit of a fever so we decided to undress her and that's when we noticed a large rash on her chest. The nurses weren't too concerned about it though. I stayed up holding Leigh the whole night till the doctor got in around 9:30. Once the doctor took her history and checked her over he decided to keep her for the day.

He suspected the rash was from the amoxicillin, so the cancelled the perception for that. During the day Leighton finally had a wet diaper and ate for a total of 20 minutes in a span of 8 hours. They did administer her two more nebulizers, which made a huge difference.

The doctor returned around 3pm to reevaluate her. Unfortunately her blood oxygen levels were not where they should be and with her being premature and having issues with her lungs when she was born he made the call to send her to a larger hospital half an hour away. This scared me as I was hoping he was going to discharge her. With her blood oxygen levels being low he told me she was going to be going by ambulance just incase they had to administer her oxygen on the way there. Thankfully I was able to travel with her. Before the ambulance arrived I had little panic attack just thinking here we go again. Just over two months ago I finally got her out of the hospital and now I was having to take my little baby back.

The ambulance drivers were amazing and reassured me it was just a safety measure and that this was the best option for her, as our little hospital isn't equipped to handle such tiny patients. Once we got to the bigger hospital an E.R nurse took her stats and amazingly they were perfect. I felt a huge sigh of relief. The on call paediatrician was next too us with another infant tell the parents it was RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus). I looked at my little baby and knew he was going to tell me the same thing, as I knew the signs from when Lennox had it at one month old. He came and examined Leighton and said it was RSV (not surprising) and that she was looking good and just wanted to monitor her for the next few hours.

Three hours later and her levels continued to stay level. He told me we could go home but to be so careful with her and that if she goes back to how she was to bring her in. He also said that because she is a preemie and had lung issues that she is more a high risk from a term baby. He advised us to cancel any Christmas plans and that if we did have visitors that they don't hold her or that they use hand sanitizer.

With out a doubt in my mind I knew we had to cancel our plans. I am not even disappointed as I was feeling a little spread thin with all the running around anyways. A nice quite Christmas at home to get both our girls feeling 100% is just what the doctor ordered for all of us.

Love

Tasha ❤️