I guess every day cant be a good day....

Cruz minus his twin brother
Ryder back in the dreaded isolette
Ryder's head IV
Cruz on Aug.5th

Our twin boys have been plugging along just perfectly with virtually no hiccups at all so-to-speak but today was a disappointing day.....

The boys were really gassy on Friday and Saturday and were finally transferred to a closer hospital last night (yay!) but.....unfortunately Ryder is still suffering from a painful tummy that is getting continually more distended. It looks like a balloon and is quite taught. He cries out in pain when the nurses palpate it, poor guy is hurtin'. Cruz's gas has resolved and he is doing fine but today Ryder's vital signs alarm kept going off and he must have de-saturated 5-6 times in the first 15 minutes I was there! (ie.decrease in oxygen levels). He even changed color during one of them which was really anxiety provoking so I re-positioned him and stimulated him by rubbing his chest a bit as his nurse was on her break so his Mummy-Nurse was watching over him. Ryder hasn't had this many bradycardia's and de-sats ever (which means decreased heart rate and decrease in oxygen levels)! They had been running tests on Ryder all morning to rule things out like NEC which is "Necrotizing Enterocolitis", a condition where the intestines become infected and can begin to die. "This disease usually affects premature babies and is a serious condition that may require surgery and has a high morbidity and mortality rate" BUT THANKFULLY the Doctor believes he has ruled this out because Ryder doesn't have any other symptoms and the x-ray's he had done this morning showed lots of air in his tummy but no fluid, thank goodness. At this point the doctor also wants to rule out infection and sepsis so I spent all morning going back and forth between my two boys because they put Ryder back in an isolette (crappy!) for 48 hours to observe him (keep an eye on his distended tummy) start him on an IV again and separate him from his brother in case he does have in infection. Unfortunately they had to shave part of both their heads today to put the IV in his head (it's the easiest vein to access in premie's) so him and his brother have been separated yet again and both lost some hair to boot. They have since done a CBC (complete blood count) and are testing for occult blood in Ryder's stool in order to rule out infection. They also took blood from Cruz's head because the doctor is worried that Cruz may have an infection too if Ryder does. Not the kind of day I was expecting to have.

The doctor came to speak with me though and explained he wants to treat Ryder's problem aggressively because its better to error on the side of caution and he worries that if it is sepsis or infection, they dont want to wait too long to treat it with medicine so they have started Ryder on antibiotics and DW5 (sugar water) just in case and in order to keep his sugars up as he is now NPO (nothing by mouth). They tried to stimulate him to pass gas but he just cant and the one toot-toot he did have wasn't big enough to decrease the girth in his poor tummy. Im praying it's just really bad gas at this point and the doctor isn't too worried but once we get all his test results back in the next 48 hours, we should know what the problem is. Please pray for gas and flatulence:)

On a brighter note....I got to breastfeed baby Cruz this morning for the first time and that little 4 lbs monkey latched for a good 15 minutes! I couldnt believe it...it was so sweet:)

They generally dont latch quite this early but he is a champ in more ways than one! Melt my heart!!!!

I cant wait to see them again tommorrow....hopefully Ryder will pass some gas in the mean time and the girth of his poor distended tummy will go down. Poor lil' fella:(