Car Seat Trial... NICU... Orogastric (OG) Feeding tube

On our baby's 4th day of life, we finally heard word that a certified car seat trial nurse would be coming to see us. She brought a car bed with her to check if the baby's oxygen desaturations would improve while on the car bed vs the car seat. The car bed would allow us get over this hurdle and our baby boy could at least go home. Little known fact: Car beds are usually used on small and/or fragile babies, and because they are usually used for a short period of time, the hospital rents them out. When the specialist arrived, she showed the nurse who attempted to do the test the day before, how to properly do the test. She first tried testing our baby on his carseat but he was a bit fussy, once he calmed down he went to sleep, almost immediately his oxygen levels dropped, and she immediately took him out of the car seat. Next, she setup the car bed on the floor the way it would be placed in the car and proceeded to put our baby in it and buckled him. His oxygen levels dropped again. Ok, now what? We can't go home! Ughh!

Now, things were getting serious. Due to the issues with the car seat and car bed she recommended that our baby be monitored overnight with an apnea monitor and a pulse oximeter to ensure he didn't have sleep apnea or that he was not having other oxygen desaturations episodes at other times as well, without us noticing.

Sleepless Night

My husband and I tried to feed baby boy while trying to keep him in a good position without any alarms going off. We discovered that his oxygen levels would drop from 100% when he was in certain positions, whether he was feeding or not, but what was interesting is that he would be fine lying flat on his back in the crib. The car bed was also flat, and he was not ok in there.

The next day

After multiple oxygen desaturations overnight, the attending pediatrician and residents notified us that they were concerned about aspiration of his milk intake into his lungs. Due to this concern, by the afternoon I was directed not to feed him the bottle anymore and was notified that an IV would be put in place for him to get his nutrition, what?! That would be until a swallow study could be done in the morning. No way, this baby would not be satisfied with just an IV! I was alone at the time they told me about this. This was a red flag. I immediately contacted my social worker, as well as the craniomaxillofacial surgeon for an opinion and to express our concerns on how uncomfortable we were given the concerns for our baby and his care. We felt he needed to be monitored in a NICU or similar environment, not just by standalone machines and his parents in the room waiting for a nurse to come if an alarm went off. We were seriously concerned about our baby boy's well being, and as a result many tears were shed. Our baby's craniomaxillofacial surgeon arrived as nurses tried to put an IV on our baby 4 times. It was then, after he talked to me that he talked to the attending pediatrician expressing our concerns and then talked to a neonatologist in the NICU. They decided as a team that our baby should be in the NICU. Thank goodness! Immediately after we got to the NICU the doctors assessed him, put an OG tube for feedings and took out the IV.