Unhappy First

My poor little baby girl!  Caroline came down with a 103.6 temp on Friday night and I rushed her to the Cook Children's hospital.  We were put in our own private rooms since she is a newborn.  They catheterized her, did a spinal tap, took blood and started an IV.  She ended up having a bladder infection and was admitted to Cook's at 1:00 pm Saturday morning.

On Saturday morning, she had to have another kidney ultrasound.  This ultrasound came back showing her kidney's slightly enlarged compared to her ultrasound a week ago.  They also found a duplicate ureter that goes from her kidney and then connects with the original ureter.  This can potentially mean that she is more prone to bladder infections if the duplicate ureter doesn't empty fully.    We had a pretty good day after the ultrasound.  However, that night her iv came out of her vein and was burning her hand.  Rodney had duty at that time and said that she was screaming bloody murder.  They had a hard time changing the iv and was going to put it in her head if they could get it inserted into her other arm.  Luckily, they got it inserted and we averted the head iv.  About 3 hours later that had to redo the iv again because it had partially come out of her vein causing her pain.  They got it readjusted and we had not other issues with the iv's going forward.

Sunday was pretty uneventful except for the fact that I got a 24 hour stomach bug and had to leave the hospital.  So poor Rodney had to do a double shift, but at least there was someone with each one of the kiddos.

On Monday I was pretty good and went back to the hospital for her voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) x-ray.  The VCUG shows whether the urine is moving in the right direction. Normally, urine flows from the kidneys down to the bladder through the ureters. When urine goes back up toward the kidneys, it's called vesicoureteral (VU) reflux, which a VCUG can detect. Sometimes VU reflux only occurs while urinating (voiding), which is why the VCUG includes taking X-ray images while the bladder is being emptied. Caroline did great during the procedure and the test came back negative.  According to this test, she does not have any refluxing of urine back up towards her kidneys.  It also appears that the duplicate ureter is functioning correct.

Since all test came back great, Caroline was released at 4:00 pm on Monday.  We will have a urologist appointment in a few weeks to determine the course of action to prevent future bladder infections. 

I am so proud of Caroline and hope she never has to go through any of this ever again.  I hope that this was just a one time occurrence.