My poor little Reed

I'm so happy Reed is now home, but I thought I'd blog about how it all happened. He started getting sick on Friday last week with fevers and a cold. I took him to the doctor on Monday and they told me he had a bad cold and just prescribed eye drops. Reed and Luke had a 6 month check on Wednesday so I took him to that and he got prescribed some antibiotics and breathing treatments. We came home and he went to bed. Awhile later he woke up fussing and I tried to feed him. He looked a little pale but when he took one suck of that bottle he turned extremely pale. I put him next to Luke and Reed looked like he had a blueish undertone to his skin. His skin was also very mottled (blotchy). I took a respiratory rate and it was 84 (babies his age are supposed to be 20-40 breathes per minute). Then I knew he absolutely had to go in. I got him to the emergency department and they took him to a room right away. His oxygen level in his blood was 86 (it's supposed to be between 95-100), his heart rate was 222 (normal is around 120), his reparations were still high. They immediately put him on oxygen at 1.5 liters (they prefer if they would be around .5 L). That helped but he still dipped with is oxygen saturation. We went for a chest x-ray and I was extremely surprised at the results. Not only did he have RSV, but pneumonia with infiltrates all over his lungs (collection of fluid). Then they mentioned that the could not care for him at Holland and he would have to be transferred to Helen Devos Children's Hospital. They transferred us by ambulance (without lights and sirens) because he had to be on oxygen. I would rather not repeat the ride, it can make your tummy queasy. We got there and they did several respiratory treatments and got him under control. They weren't sure at first if he would have to be admitted to the ICU or not, but thankfully they were able to keep him on the regular peds floor. They said that he had very diminished lungs sounds on the bottom of his lungs (he was not exchanging air on the bases of his lungs) and he was sucking in very hard to breathe. The whole day they couldn't get his oxygen down from 1 liter and had to make the call and put him on high flow oxygen (puts pressure in the lungs to open them up for air exchange) he was on it overnight and partway into the next day.

My poor pale Reed

They were finally able to get that under control and put him back on regular oxygen cannula. And from their he started doing much much better. He went from extremely pale to getting some color back.

Resting comfortably

Today he acted more himself then I have seen him in a week. I'm so thankful he was able to come home today!!! Like Leanne says "it's just not family without mommy, daddy, and Reed."