Why Would You Do That?!

This morning just before Malia’s 6 a.m. feeding, her nurse called me and told me that Malia’s stats were all over the place, that she had lost weight, that she was super sleepy and hard to rouse and that they were going to skip her feeding and just do a tube feed.  I, or course, got all stressed out.  What mother wouldn’t?  It seemed that my baby had taken a sudden turn for the worse.  So as soon as I was able, I walked down to the nursery to get some more info.  By then there had been a shift change and Malia had a new nurse, one that has spent the day with her before.  When I asked how she was, the nurse informed me that she was doing good.  Yes they tube fed her this morning, but it was because she was pretty sleepy (which is totally normal for a 34 weeker) and about an hour after her feeding she roused and had a good fuss session.  Her temperature was just fine and her blood oxygen had dropped for just a few minutes so they just did a bit of blow by oxygen and then she was back to normal.  She had lost a bit of weight, but it was less than she had put on the day before.  Essentially, things were pretty much the same as they were, no major changes.  We think Malia was just a bit more tuckered out because of all the good feeding and alert time she had yesterday.

So let me ask you: why in the world would you call a mother, rouse her from sleep and tell her that her baby was not doing well if there was nothing to be alarmed about?!    I mean, it doesn’t take much to make the mother of a five day old preemie baby panic.  Not only is there the standard worry that happens in any situation where your child is threatened, but there are a boatload of hormones still all whacked up as well.  And you would think that a nursery nurse would know that.  But obviously that is not always the case.  So I’ll take a big breath and keep on moving forward…