Gestational age: 30 weeks, 5 days 

Day of life: 41 

Beckett: 2lb, 12oz 

Juliette: 3lb, 7oz 

 

We only had to navigate the twins being in different bays for about 4 hours because Beckett moved over to Bay 2 on Monday afternoon! The babies apparently had a tough time with the transition though, as this week proved to be difficult. The beginning of the week was full of spells for both twins, which didn’t help our nerves from moving Bays, and Juliette had a bad enough spell on Monday night that they switched her back to NAVA ventilation from the CPAP machine she was on. When babies start having a lot of spells out of nowhere, the care team tests for things like infection, which could be causing them to suddenly have a hard time, so both babies had bloodwork done. Juliette was also tested for respiratory infections, but luckily, everything came back negative. Beckett had a high white blood cell count, which made them run some additional tests to go along with the bloodwork, one of which was for a possible urinary tract infection. They thought this could also potentially be connected to his difficulty in digesting milk. In order to get a clean urine sample, they have to use a catheter. When they tried on Monday, they only got a few drops of urine, which ended up not being enough to test. They tried again on Tuesday and couldn’t get the catheter through after several attempts. They were going to retry again on Tuesday evening, but decided to start antibiotics preemptively instead. Juliette was also preemptively started on a course of antibiotics because she was tested for a UTI too, which on Wednesday evening was confirmed positive. The blood culture for both twins didn’t show signs of growth, which is reassuring that they don’t have another kind of infection. They both received blood transfusions this week, at different times, which perked them up and helped reduce the number of spells towards the end of the week. Very premature babies aren’t quite ready to produce their own blood, so transfusions are fairly common in the NICU. So far, Beckett has received four and Juliette has gotten two. A good reminder to donate blood when and if you’re able. You could save a baby! 

 

Poor Beckett really went through the ringer with being poked and prodded throughout the week. In addition to everything above and his routine blood draws/x-rays, he had to have his ostomy bag changed more often than usual due to leaks, which makes the skin around his ostomy very irritated and causes his stoma to bleed. He had multiple NAVA tube changes and an ultrasound to look at the organs in his upper right abdomen, in addition to his weekly head ultrasound. Luckily, the Nephrology team told us on Friday that his sodium issue is likely due to premature kidneys or something called SIADH (an acronym we won’t try to explain) and that they can rule out all the bad kidney stuff they were looking for. The plan, in either case, is to continue giving him sodium until his body matures and he begins to retain it on his own. 

 

Some other good news is that Juliette got to work with a Physical Therapist on Thursday, who did some exercises to help her digest her food, build diaphragm strength, and work on neck control. She did great and ended the session with a much fuller diaper than she started with. 

 

We didn’t expect the move to Bay 2 to be a hard transition, but we had a difficult time with it. Our rooms in Bay 1 were connected and tucked away in a corner. Overall, Bay 1 is fairly quiet and the rooms are slightly bigger. Bay 2 is much more active with older babies, the rooms are smaller, and the big thing is that the twins are now separated from one another. We’re sure this isn’t something the babies notice, but for us, it felt like even if we weren’t in the NICU, the twins had one another close by. Juliette’s room is very small with a curtain to the hallway instead of a door, which doesn’t offer a lot of privacy and makes you feel like you’re in the hallway. Beckett’s room is a little bigger and has a door, but you can hear every conversation in the rooms next to us. Bay 2 also has a different set of doctors and nurses, so all of the staff we got to know don’t work with us anymore. A few people staff both bays, so we’ve seen some familiar faces, but overall, it has been a tough transition. 

 

This week was hard, and we’re hoping that next week will be less eventful.