Alright, now for the stuff everyone is actually waiting for. In case you saw how long the last post was and skipped it, quick summary is that Andrea had a c-section at 27 weeks and 3 days into her pregnancy (which is just a little longer than 6 months). Aubrey was born weighing 2 pounds 1.5 ounces, and Paige weighed in at 1 pound 13.5 ounces.
Aubrey:
When Aubrey was born, she let out a few cries that sounded kind of like a baby kitten. She was bruised all over her body, presumably because she was way down in the uterus and got compressed quite a bit (or maybe she and Paige got into a kicking fight and Paige won). Today is day 6 and she is still bruised up pretty badly. The picture below shows some of the bruising on her face. We have some that show the bruising pretty well, but they're a bit graphic for a blog.
From my memory, Aubrey wasn't intubated right away. They gave her a nasal cannula to help her breathe. However, after she arrived at the NICU she got tired from the effort of breathing, so her doctor intubated her. (In the picture above you can see that tube in her mouth. It goes down her trachea and forces air in and out of her lungs to help her breathe) I think one of her eyes was still fused closed, but one was open, so they put some antibacterial ointment in the open eye to prevent infection, shown in the picture above. Due to all her bruising, she was placed under special lights to help her body process the byproducts of the bruising (bilirubin). She has some cool shades to protect her eyes from the lights as shown below.
In that picture, you get a pretty good close-up of her ventilation tubes, and you can see the IV access lines in her right arm and right leg. Here's a picture of her mommy touching her little hand about 4 hours after she was born.
Paige:
When Paige was born, she didn't let out any noise. She was intubated right away and given a stocking cap to keep her little head warm.
She wasn't bruised like Aubrey (like I said, I think she won the fight). One of my favorite pictures is the one below. It shows how tiny she is.
When she was transferred to the ICU, Dr Mir was able to to insert two umbilical lines into an artery and vein of her umbilical cord (called UA and UV lines). This is similar to a PICC line, but doesn't require any needles and is painless to the baby. Because Dr Mir was able to establish UA and UV lines, she has not had to have any needle sticks as of Day 6.
Apparently, establishing UA and UV lines is extremely difficult (they couldn't get Aubrey's started. A different doctor was working on hers). A battle-hardened NICU nurse explained it as such (and I quote verbatim): "It's like sticking a fire hose up an ant's ass."
During the first night, Paige required more ventilator support than Aubrey did. X-rays showed that Paige's lungs were less mature than Aubrey's. Both girls' lungs are not very well developed, but that's typical for micro preemies.
One difference between the girls is that Paige really likes to grab things. Anything that gets placed next to her hands gets grabbed, whether it's Andrea's finger (in picture below), g-tubes, IV lines, pretty much anything within reach. She has pulled off her heart monitoring leads a few times. Pretty funny.
Before the girls were born, Andrea's OB doctor was suspicious that there might be something wrong with Paige's digestive tract. Paige had a lot of amniotic fluid around her, and the doctor was having a hard time seeing her stomach in her ultrasounds, so she suspected that Paige might have something called esophageal atresia. This is a condition where the mouth and stomach are not connected due to a defect of the esophagus, and requires multiple surgeries to correct. In the picture above, you can see that tube with the yellowish gunk in it on top of Andrea's finger. The gunk in that tube told us Paige did not have esophageal atresia.
Well, that about sums up the girls' first birthday. All in all, they had a pretty good first day of life considering how early they were born.
No comments:
Post a Comment