Back to the Hospital...Boo =(

So we spent our first night at home Thursday and it went fairly well. Carter slept most of the day which meant he decided he wanted to hang out around 10:30 at night. Dad stayed up and entertained him for an hour until Carter fell asleep. He woke back up around 12:30 when mom took over until he passed out after finally having a good feeding at 2:00. He slept until 5:00, got another feeding and went back to bed until 8:00.

We then cleaned up the house a bit and took Carter to the pediatrician's office for his first visit. Unfortunately, he body temp was fairly low so the pediatrician sent us to Children's Healthcare to spend the weekend getting it checked out.

We got here around noon on Friday and spent a few hours in the emergency room while Carter got poked and prodded. He was a real trouper! We then got moved to the Pediatric Intensive Care unit for the night. They put him in a warmer to get his body temp up and hooked him up to monitors since his respiratory and heart rate were low. They started Carter on antibiotics while they tried to figure out what was going on. It was a very long night for mom and dad as the events of the week were a bit much to handle. Luckily, by morning Carter was off the warmer and oxygen.

This is a picture of him in his warming bed on Saturday morning.

And he was maintaining all his vitals. All the tests the doctors ran looking for an infection or defect came back negative after 24 hours. The Dr.s decided most likely Carter was just having trouble maintaining his body temperature do to his small size and early delivery. They decided this meant Carter could move to the regular Pediatric floor (dad was really excited that this also meant he was no longer considered to be in "critical" condition). The Dr said this could continue to be an issue for the first month, but as long as he is breathing normally, not blue and eating well, he should be fine at home.

Below is a picture of Carter being moved.

Once on the pediatric floor, the doctors let us know they still wanted to watch Carter on antibiotics for another 24 hours and then keep him here for an additional 24 hours without any medications. This is overly cautious but given his size/gestational week/mom's Group B strep status (I was positive but due to the extra-modal delivery neither Carter nor I got the standard antibiotics) they feel it is the best course of action.

So we will be at Children's until Monday afternoon. Hopefully we will be able to go home then and stay there this time! Carter has been great ever since we moved. He wakes up every few hours when he wants his diaper changed or is hungry and other than that he is sleeping like a champ. His vitals are doing well so we are optimistic that things are looking up!

Here is a picture of my precious, little boy. I might be biased but I think he is adorable!

Here is a picture of Carter with the balloon dad got for him (did I mention my husband is an amazing father?). If you can't tell it is a Monkey hanging upside down and the bottom says "Hang in There" - too cute!