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Preemies
crystaleyes39
member
preemie w/ high blood pressure...
crystaleyes39
member
in Preemies
Our twin girls are now almost 2 weeks old and one of our girls Kendall recently has been showing some high blood pressure. They have been running tons of tests on her kidneys and still waiting on results for an ecocardiogram (spelling?). Her kidneys thank god from the tests so far are looking okay. I'm just super stressed and worried. She's been doing so well and there has been even talk of her leaving the NICU soon and now this happened.
Has anyone else experianced this w/ their preemie while in the NICU?
Any T&P are appreciated.
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Re: preemie w/ high blood pressure...
I have a long winded answer... but I will try to keep it short.
LO was born at 28w4d. He spent 20 days at a Level III NICU and then was transferred to a Special Care Nursery closer to home for the next 62 days. He was still on the monitors (obviously. But not on a BP cuff or anything)
The only thing keeping him in was that he wouldn't eat from a bottle. There were talks of G-tube, reflux, milk allergy etc. Eventually, the combo of Zantac and Allimentum did enough that they sent him home.
11 days later, he had a choking episode and we went back to the ER. They Neo on call that night (our favorite Neo) sent him back into town to the Level III NICU to be seen by the feeding clinic. He spent the next 6 days there-- going through a battery of tests (including an Echo). They found severe reflux and he needed more than just the small dose of Zantac (he is still on both Zantac and Prilosec). They also found that his BP was high (see... long winded!). They had the visiting nurse check his BP for the next 6 weeks or so (could have been more, I can't remember at this point!). At first, she found it to be high too, but over time, it started to come down and be normal. My Pedi is attributing it to the stress and pain that the reflux was causing him. With the meds his reflux improved so much and so now he wasn't stressed about eating and in pain.
I guess the point of the WHOLE story is that if your daughter is uncomfortable or stressed in anyway, it could be causing her BP to be higher. If the Kidneys and Echo come back clean, I would see if there could be any outside reasons for that to be happening.
HTH!
My MARRIED Bio
This happened to Scarlette. In her case it was just a preemie thing. They said it starts spontaneously and lasts til about 10months. They put her on blood pressure medication for it and we had to visit our cardiologist once a month and take her blood pressure every day when she was home before giving her meds orally. They were totally right, around 9 months it started going down and was totally normal and the meds d/c'd by 10 months. They said they don't know why, it just tends to happen in some preemies.
They also tested her kidneys and did echocardiograms and they all came back normal, her cardiologist said she sees a few preemies each year that just have preemie high blood pressure.
The only other time she had high blood pressure prior to it onsetting was when she had a fracture in her arm.
HTH
Thank you all so much. So far (knock on wood) her first kidney test and echocardiogram came back completely normal. So we're hoping that it is just outside factors. The kidney specialist did say "she may just be ready to go home." She's eating eating almost her full feeding by bottle almost everytime now and I can tell she hates the feeding tube. Plus she has really bad diaper rash so i'm thinking that all can be maybe adding to her BP going up. I'm praying the last kidney test comes back normal and that everything is fine.
IT definitely eases my mind to know that your LO all were fine though! thank you!