Let's do Paige first. She's been really swollen the past few days. This picture shows it pretty well.
It looks like she doesn't have a neck. Dr Sebald and I discussed the swelling in relation to her overall health, and said that they were trying to find a balance between too much and too little fluid in her. From the standpoint of her heart and circulatory system, she needs fluid. However, her lungs need to be dry in order to function correctly, which requires less fluid. It's hard to get just the right balance in a baby as small as her.
Based on X-rays from the past few days, Paige's lungs appear to be slowly improving. She's still on the oscillator and is still slowly weaning (current settings as of this post are MAP 13, Amplitude 26, oxygen 27%). According to her doctors she will probably remain on it for at least another week. It will be nice when we get rid of that noisy oscillator, but for now it's doing a fine job of keeping Paige alive.
Paige is now getting 1 mL of milk every 3 hours (up from 1 mL every 6 hours last post). Like her sister, her feeding tube had to be pushed down from her stomach into her intestines because the milk was just sitting in her tummy and not moving down into her intestines.
Aubrey's turn.
She continues to progress a bit faster than her sister. She is on the regulator ventilator, and her settings are very low (PIP 18, PEEP 6, 20 bpm, % oxygen in high 20s). The plan is to extubate her (take out the breathing tube) on Tuesday, today's posting date!
In order to give her the best shot at having a successful extubation, she is getting a 3-day treatment with a steroid called hydrocortisone. The rationale is that the steroid will reduce the swelling in her airway and make it easier for her to breathe on her own.
Aubrey is now getting 18 mL of milk every 3 hours (up from 14 mL last post), which is basically full feeding for her. Her IV nutrition is running at the lowest rate possible just to keep the IV line open in case it is needed for an emergency, so she is living off milk now. As unpleasant as pumping has been for Andrea, she is encouraged that her milk is actually being put to good use.
It appears that Aubrey's left foot may have gotten a little twisted up when she was inside mommy. A nurse noticed it a few days ago, and an occupational therapist came in for a quick look on Monday. Basically, her left foot is extremely pigeon-toed (as opposed to penguin-toed) and the outside of her foot points downward. When I asked if she has a club foot, I was told that she probably does not. We'll most likely have to do some foot exercises with her to help her straighten out and she might require a splint or a cast. The occupational therapist said that these things can usually be corrected in a few months. You can kind of see her left foot pointing outwards in this picture.
If you look closely at the picture above, you'll see something kind of funny. Both girls get extremely irritable when they have wet/soiled diapers (maybe this will help them potty train really fast?). Aubrey was throwing a fit a few days ago, so we figured she had a wet diaper. When we checked her, she had half crawled out of her very wet diaper. Here is another angle of her trying to escape the clutches of the nasty wet diaper.
After laughing at her Houdini tactics long enough to get a few pictures and call over some other nurses to see great escape, we helped her out of her diaper and into a new one and she was a much happier camper.
Thanks for keeping up with the posts. Your daughters are looking more and more healthy and I can't wait to meet them in person. You are all still in our prayers!
ReplyDelete