My wife is not one to be in front of a crowd.  Even through a blog, she still remains shy; however, since she was the one in the front row of this circus today, I asked that she give you all a run down of what happened today.

Asher’s temperature dropped from 98.2 to 97.4 in about an hour, which isn’t unusual, but still bad because he needed to be 97.6 for the doctor to send him out the door. With this being said, our nurse bundled him tight and told us to go get lunch and see what his temp was like in an hour. We left still thinking we would be heading home that afternoon with Asher in tow.  He only had to raise his temperature two tenths of a degree in an hour, and the way he was wrapped up, that should not have been a problem. However, when we got back from lunch, we took his temp again and it was down to 96.8. Thinking we had a faulty temp strip, we took it again, only to get a 96.6. At this point, the nurse and I both thought the temp strips were wrong because he FELT warmer than that, so she went to get a digital thermometer thinking for sure that is would read warmer. But it actually wound up much worse….95.8, so from 10:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. his temperature went down 2.5 degrees, which didn’t speak well for his ability to hold his temperature, and meant that he was not coming home with us.

The doctor had him put back in a warmer because it was the fastest way to stabilize his temperature and he’ll remain in it until the doctor feels he is ready to go in the incubator again. Asher had many tests run today in an effort to make sure that there is not a more serious issue than his premature age keeping his temp from stabilizing.

He had chest/abdominal x-rays taken, which came back normal with the  exception of an increased amount of gas in his stomach, which wasn’t anything she was too concerned with. However, in order to give his stomach time to regulate she took him off of his milk for the night and put him on an IV. She also started giving him antibiotics through the IV as a proactive measure to fight off any infection he may be getting.

He had blood work drawn. Although all of the results are not in yet, the test did show that he is slightly anemic. The doctor is really waiting to see if they show some kind of infection.

He had CT scan done. He has had two ultrasounds of his brain, both of which have been completely normal, but the CT scan is more in depth.

Although it seems as if we are back at the very beginning, the doctor just wants to make sure that she is not missing something. It may just be that he was not ready to come home yet. He is a big boy for how early he was born, so the doctors and nurses have to remind themselves that his gestational age is just 34.5 weeks at the present. We will know more when the test results are in tomorrow, although the doctor says not to expect him home at least a week. Thanks for all of your prayers!