Minor setbacks and midnight calls from the NICU

We received a phone call from the NICU last night at midnight (talk about jarring) from the doctor who was updating us on a minor setback for Zoë in case we were to call or come in this morning.  Zoë started throwing up her food regularly and they feared that there was a perforation in her stomach.  They ordered an abdominal xray for this morning and suspended her breast milk feeds through her feeding tube.  She is getting her nutrition through her PICC line, only.

When I arrived for her care time at 11am, our wonderful nurse invited me to sit in for rounds (when about 8 doctors and nurses who are responsible for Zoë's care sit around a table and go through her medical plan for the next 24 hours).  I got to see her xray, which the neonatologist said looked good, no perforations and her belly is not distended at all, which would be a good indication of a larger problem.  They told me that this set-back is pretty common for a baby her age and that her inability to tolerate the full feeds so quickly was not much of a surprise because of the immaturity of her gastrointestinal tract.  They ordered another xray for tomorrow (she's also getting another CT scan) to just be certain there's nothing wrong with her stomach and then they'll start to SLOWLY work their way back up to a full feed with her.  We're thankful they hadn't taken the PICC line out yet because otherwise they would have had to insert another IV for her food.

Needless to say, I didn't handle the phone call last night very well.  The NICU journal I received today from nurse Jeanne says that NICU progress is often two steps forward and one step back but it sure is hard for me to handle the step backwards, considering how well Zoë's done so far.  I think it might be easier for me to handle if she had had some problems already and this was just another tiny step backwards.  I just want her to continue being a rockstar!

In better news, she gained 30 grams today and has now surpassed her birth weight.  Woo hoo!  Apparently she'll continue to gain weight even with the intravenous feeding but it might not be as impressive as it has been.

We went again at 5pm tonight to see her and Chris held her for over an hour.  Just another amazing moment to our day.

I've been told not to generalize about what I will or will not do as a parent :) but my mom mentioned today how those midnight phone calls never become easy, just think about what it'll be like to get one in the middle of the night when she's a teenager and out on her own.  I told her that Zoë will not be going out as a teenager, so I won't need to worry about that.  That's reasonable, right?