Penny goes Home! (and Isaak has a scare)

In the biggest news of their short lives so far, one of the little monkeys has made it home. Penny decided a couple of weeks ago that, yes, she was about ready to go and pulled her own oxygen off. It took a bit to get her to completely oral feeds, but she got there this week. Mom roomed in with her a couple of nights and all went well, so here we are. Her first night was a little challenging as she decided to wake up a couple of times - and apparently has learned to cry finally. Mommy and I are a little tired but very happy (nay ECSTATIC) to have our little girl at home.

Proof is in the pictures!

Thanks to Amanda M. for getting the great pictures at UNC. We silly people had forgotten our camera. You will note in the pictures that her first outside world stop was the cafeteria at UNC - we didn't quite get to leave when we wanted as little brother decided drama was in order (maybe to keep his twin nearby?)

So Isaak...he had a rough evening yesterday. In the late afternoon, probably around 5, I noticed that his heart rate was really low. It often goes low when he's sleeping, but this was around 130 rather than the 140 that is normal. I mentioned it to the nurse and she immediately took his temperature and it was way too cool. He also wasn't really moving much at all. Next thing I know, there were 6 nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors in the room, all while I was standing there holding Penny. Poor mommy wasn't there because she was getting Penny's car bed ready out in the parking deck (little girl is not quite ready for a seat) so I had to text her what was going on.

First order of business was a warmer to get his temp back up and then they took a bunch of cultures looking for infection. We won't know anything about that for 3-5 days. Unfortunately for the little guy, one of the cultures they decided to take was via lumbar puncture. We weren't terribly keen on that particular procedure, but the docs indicated that one infection that can cause a temp drop rather than a fever is meningitis and that we would want to catch that right now rather than wait. One of the other infections that can cause a drop is sepsis, so that's just scary as crap all the way around.

On the positive side, he either responded well to the antibiotics or to the warmer and by the time we left (11pm - 8 1/2 hours after Penny's "discharge") he was acting much better. He was wiggly and vocalizing so we are crossing our fingers this is just a blip.

We haven't been to see him yet today, but the nurse reports that he is pretty active this morning and was fighting back during assessment. That's a good sign. Let me tell you, this whole thing points out how important it is for a parent to know their child's normal behavior, even at this early age.