NICCU

Our unexpected NICCU stay quickly turned into a 2 day stay, totally not what we had planned on. We drove up to CHLA  Wednesday anxious to get Noelle back home when we got there we were informed they would not be able to release her because her sodium levels were dangerously low.

I of course wasn't planning on this news and immediately called her doctors to try to get them to release her so we could get out of there. Soon after I started calling around her I got in touch with Noelle's amazing NICU doctor that helped with here when she was born. The doctor explained to me that she did need to be closely monitored and that the low sodium levels were likely to go back to normal after she peed off all the extra IV fluids. What most likely happened is she was over hydrated during surgery and it caused her sodium levels to drop so low that she was on seizure watch, I later found out with her levels as low as they were she could have died!

Now that we were on our second day of an unexpected stay we decided to find a place to stay so we wouldn't have to make the drive again and found a store to get the essentials we would need to hold us over until we could go home. We now know that any time we go to the hospital for any procedures we will go expecting to stay the night, then we can be pleasantly surprised if we don't.

The following morning Noelle's sodium levels returned back to their normal level and we were able to go home and get back to our kids! We are so thankful once again for my mom and her help while we went through all of this, she took care of the older two girls without complaining and spoiled them rotten =)