Blood transfusions for BBC

We got a call in the afternoon from DCH. Today was a little rough on BBC -- although he did a good job of being on the CPAP the previous night, the work of breathing was tiring him out and the oxygen levels in his blood kept dropping. The doctor decided to put him back on the ventilator tube to give him a rest.

In addition, they said that he had a hard time clotting where he was poked for a blood draw earlier in the day. Further analysis showed that his platelet count was low, and they asked us for consent to give him blood products (transfusions).

Because our son is so small, his blood needs are very miniscule, a fraction of a unit of blood. This is good because he would be exposed to only one donor's blood, even if he needed multiple transfusions (each additional transfusion would have come from the same master unit of blood).

He received the transfusion later in the afternoon, and retested his blood. The evening blood test showed that his red blood cell count was also a bit low, so they ordered a transfusion of red blood cells.

Here is the small sub-unit bag of red bloodcells.


The nurse and the blood delivery person cross-check each other to verify that the correct blood was being delivered to the correct baby.


The machine in the background is slowly pumping in the 10ml of transfusion blood over a 3 1/2 hour period into our son.