New Years Eve trip to the ER

This morning when we woke up, as I was changing Ella, I noticed that she was retracting in her chest just a bit. That's when the chest is sucking in under the ribs, which can indicate respiratory distress. It was pretty mild and right after, she got the hiccups so I decided just to keep an eye on it. We went to a small New Years party with just a few (HEALTHY!) friends and then came home for a nice long nap. I had seen it still while at our friends house but it was still mild. This evening, I checked and she still had the retracting. It hadn't gotten any worse but since it was still there, I called our pediatrician's office. I spoke to the on call ped who said that based on Ella's history and her current respiratory status that he wanted her seen immediately at Children's. So, off we went to the ER at Children's in Minneapolis.

When we got there, she was still having some mild retracting but everything else was totally fine. They hooked her up to a pulse oxymeter which indicated that her O2 saturation was 100%. She sounded totally clear, no temperature and looked great. We went back into a room and the doctor saw us and everything was the same except the retracting was barely noticeable. The doctor said that her belly was very full and had a lot of gas in it and that can sometimes cause babies to retract like that. They did do an influenza and RSV test just to be on the safe side though. If either of those come back positive, Ella will have to be readmitted into the hospital. We're really hoping it's not either of those two things because if Ella gets RSV or the flu, it is much, much more dangerous then if you or I get the flu. She could end up back on the vent or she could even die from it. With preemies like her, especially with the chronic lung disease and being on O2, it can be deadly so we're praying that it's not that. Thankfully, the doctor seemed relatively sure that it wasn't that.

We were in and out of there pretty quickly and got home about 10 PM. So no trips to ER in 2011 yet! ha!