A new room and a new set of nurses

Once again Ellie moved rooms in the NICU to one of the least intensive care rooms in the unit. Quite frankly, I liked the old room where the nurses doted on her and stayed within ten feet of her. She is, after all, my baby and she is still pretty sick with a gut that still hasn't functioned yet.

But she is stable and iis now in the 'feeding and growth room' as her murse, told us today. Yes you read that correctly, murse. There are 150 female nurses in the NICU and one male murse, named Jean. No I am not making this up. The only other names that would have been better would have been Pat, Terry, or Chris, but we have Jean, and he is watching Ellie tonight and is pretty good with her.

Ellie has been in the new roomfor only a few hours and Abby and I are both noticing that the less intensive care may equate with less intensive knowledge and nonchalance about her condition which is unnerving.

Today she had a diagnostic image taken of her gut after they gave her some barium dye to see how her bowels were working over some time. Well she seems to have Mom and Dad's reflux and barfed a good bunch of it while they were doing the imaging. No big deal. babies barf all the time and while the docs watched she was in good hands.

But when she started barfing again at 4:45, a few hours after her procedure and it was the same awful bilious green that we had seen in RI a lttle bit more than a week ago it was scary for Abby and I. It was also scary that I had to search to find our nurse and that he apparently had not had the thorough briefing that the nurses in the other rooms had gotten from their predecessors. Abby and I had to do some briefing before we got it taken care of. Not horribly scary but our first experience that was less than glowing with the NICU.

So we watch and wait for the dye to move.