She has continued to slowly wean off the ventilator. Here are her values as of today: PIP 26, PEEP 8, 22 BPM, oxygen is 32%. She is starting to have a pretty noticeable leak around her breathing tube. This means one of two things -- either she is growing bigger, or her trachea (tube that goes from throat to lungs) is less swollen. The last time she was having this amount of leak the medical team had to give her a bigger breathing tube. It seems that they are delaying giving her a larger tube in hopes that she will soon (what "soon" means is anyone's guess) be ready to be extubated.
Her feedings have been increased to 11 mL of milk every 3 hours (up from 6 mL last post). Just a reminder, a teaspoon is 5 mL and a tablespoon is 15 mL.
Paige did one more fun thing today (oops, it has now become yesterday):
Only took 39 days, but Paige finally got some snuggle time in with mommy! Here's another picture.
Mommy was pretty happy and had to fight back tears. Paige did really well. Andrea held her for about an hour and a half, and would have held her longer if she didn't have to pump. Paige still hasn't had any snuggle time with daddy, but maybe it will happen tomorrow if she's having a good day. Here we are with Paige.
Andrea commented that Paige is a bit of a lightweight compared to Aubrey.
Aubrey's turn now.
She has had some good days also. Her high-flow settings are about the same as last post. She's still on 6 liters of air per minute at about 25% oxygen. Rumor has it that when she is stable at under 25% oxygen, her flow rate of 6 liters/minute can be reduced a little. Here's a picture of her today (yesterday).
That hanging tube device in the foreground is her stomach vent that releases air that gets forced in from the high flow nasal cannula. Once her flow rate is reduced a little, that stomach tube can come out. That will be nice for her, because that tube in her mouth is really starting to annoy her.
Over the past week or so, Aubrey's overall physical appearance has matured a lot. She looks less like a micro-preemie and more like a regular preemie. Today (yesterday) she was awake and engaged for about 2 hours straight. She just had her eyes wide open and was looking around her incubator and at me. I probably should have taken a picture of her, but I was having too much fun with her to stop and grab the camera.
Aubrey had her PICC line taken out a couple days ago, so now she has no more IV's! With this newfound freedom, we are a step closer to that elusive sister-sister photo. For now I'll have to be content with the solo shots.
The pediatric orthopedic surgeon stopped by to check out Aubrey's left leg, and he said that he wasn't really concerned about anything right now. He said that most of the babies with problems similar to Aubrey's just grow out of them in a couple months. For now, we're continuing to put on the splint and do foot exercises.
Aubrey's feeds are now fully fortified with the milk additive, meaning she gets an extra 20% of calories with each feeding. An ounce of plain breast milk contains 20 calories. Aubrey's fortified milk contains 24 calories per ounce, so at her current feedings of 22 mL every 8 hours she gets 141 calories each day. If you were to scale that calorie count up to a 150 lbs adult, it's the equivalent of you or me eating 6800 calories per day. It takes 13 McDonald's Big Macs to equal 6800 calories. No wonder babies grow so fast.
Today (yesterday) I held Aubrey while she was being fed. Her nurse wrapped her up burrito style similar to the pictures above and I held her for the first time in a way that I could actually look at her (with skin to skin kangeroo care, you can't really see the baby that well). I looked at her for about an hour, and she looked at me until she feel asleep. That was pretty cool.....
I love participating in your joy at holding Paige! Thanks for the happy tears this morning!
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