Do You Treat Your Preemie Differently?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 19:31All of our kids are sick again. Actually, I don’t even know if it really qualifies as again, since it seems like someone in the house has been sick continuously for the past 3 weeks. Naturally, I’m concerned about our youngest, since he’s just 4 months old this week, and he’s the most likely candidate for a hospital stay, oxygen or whatever other badness you can think of from his current case of bronchiolitis. Or is he?
I’ve been carefully monitoring his oxygen with our pulse ox, giving him nebulizer treatments and antibiotics for the ear infection that has returned after only two days of medicine. But, no matter who is most sick, I can’t help but be reminded of why we have our very own pulse oximeter in the first place.
After our 31 weeker was discharged from the NICU, less than a week after she reached her due date, she contracted RSV and influenza A. She ended up in the hospital for 5 more days, and on oxygen for 6 weeks. Once we finally got her weaned of the O2, she had the bad habit of dropping her oxygen saturations if a someone so much as talked about being sick around her. Worse yet, when she was sick, she developed an even nastier habit of needing more and more oxygen whenever she fell asleep. We’d start out at 1/4 L at bedtime, and end up on 1 1/2 L by 3 am. I spent endless hours watching the pulse ox we wrangled out of our insurance company. In fact, she was like this for so long, our insurance company actually bought our pulse ox machine.
Whenever anyone is sick, I find myself watching our preemie like a hawk. Just a year ago, a sniffle would have landed her on oxygen for a week. Every time she coughs, I haul out the pulse ox and my stethoscope, take her temperature, etc, etc. I constantly expect the worst, but when our eldest is sick, I usually assume she’s just fine (she’s healthy, 5 years-old, and VERY dramatic).
I wonder if I’ll always watch over her a little more closely. Will a cough or a sniffle always put me on edge, or will the problems she’s had gradually fade into the background? Will I always treat her a little differently? Sometimes I think my vigilance is justified, but other times I wonder.
What do you think?
