One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

When we were driving to the hospital yesterday a song came on by my favorite artist growing up, Paula Abdul. Although I know Paula was better known for her dancing ability than her singing or thought provoking lyrics, the chorus of this song reminded me of what our lives in the NICU have been like:' One Step Forward and Two Steps Back.' Landon had an amazing week off of the vent. He alternated between the CPAP oxygen delivery mask and regular nasal prongs, giving us the first glimpses of his face without a ton of tape and such. Everyone was so happy with his progress and I finally got to hold him skin to skin, an incredible feeling.

We began to hope that we would have a smooth course at least until Landon would need his surgery in a few months. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. When we walked into the NICU on Sunday we saw a sight that we hadn't seen in several weeks, doctors and nurses surrounding Landon's bedside. He had been perfectly fine earlier that morning and in fact was breathing with the assistance of the nasal prongs, which is pretty much the lowest level of oxygen support. For some reason his little body started dumping massive amounts of fluid from his ostomy site in his stomach. Even more concerning the fluid was extremely bloody.

Although it was a frightening sight to see, Landon wasn't acting sick, giving us hope that maybe the wound area had gotten irritated somehow causing the fluid loss and blood rather than the more scary alternative...an infection. It was decided he would start antibiotics just in case. It went down hill from there. Landon started dropping his heart rate and was starting to struggle to breathe. He began to take a few hard breathes and then not breathe at all for a few seconds in order to rest. His blood results came back that he had virtually no platelets in his blood and that he was severely anemic from the blood loss.

He kept struggling for a few hours before it became apparent that this was an infection and his body was too tired to fight it and breathe. He had to be intubated and put back on the ventilator in order to give him a chance to fight the infection. This is not uncommon when a baby gets an infection in the NICU, but was still heart breaking. When I think of everything he has been through and now this, it takes my breathe away. I literally can't breathe for a moment when it overwhelms me and all I want to do is hold him, something not really possible while he fights the infection. However, I need to handle it because I am expecting Landon to do so and how can I do anything less.

They suspect the infection is NEC, a serious gut infection babies in the NICU are prone to get. The consequences of NEC can be serious, possibly leading to another hole in his intestines and further surgeries due to the infection killing the intestinal wall. We are praying that the infection was caught quickly enough and that the antibiotics will stop further progression. Our little fighter is holding his own. Although he is on the vent, it is on low settings and the hope is that he will only stay on it for a few days to get his reserves back up. He has been able to keep his blood pressure up without medications, which is very important and shows he is still fighting the infection himself as much as he can.

We know he is strong. We know he can get through this, but we really wish he didn't have to. We continue to pray that he doesn't have further complications and begins to show that spunk we know and love again soon.