Days 16-17 - February 8-9, 2013

Days 16 - 17 were largely a set back for both girls.  Let's talk about Paige first.

On the morning of Day 16 (Friday), Paige's lungs collapsed, so she had to be switched from the conventional ventilator back to the oscillator.

That dinosaur that you see in the picture above (i'm talking about the machine, not Andrea's mom - how dare you) is the oscillator.  We were hoping we wouldn't have to see that thing again.  The good news is that her lungs look a lot better in the X-rays now, and her blood gases have been better.  Here's Paige with her eyes kinda open.

The tape makes it look like she has a sweet buck tooth.  Paige's second round of indomethacin was finished on Friday, so we'll see how successful it was on Monday when her next echocardiogram is scheduled.  She's being fed 1 mL of mommy's milk every 6 hours now that the indomethacin treatment is over.

Now it's Aubrey's turn.

She's still on the conventional ventilator, but they've had to increase her pressures and oxygen a little bit over the past few days.  Her first course of indomethacin was completed on Friday, like her sister, so we'll know on Monday when they do the echocardiogram how well it worked.

She doesn't appear to have more blood than normal in her lungs when they suction her, so that's a good thing. On Saturday she had a pretty low red blood cell count, so she was given another blood transfusion.

Aubrey is getting 1 mL of mommy's milk every 3 hours.  Here she is from her mom's perspective.

One interesting thing was that on Saturday we saw Aubrey pooping.  She was having her diaper changed by the nurse and just started going.

In case any of you are curious, here's both girls' current weights (hopefully I did the gram to pound conversions right):

Aubrey:
     Day 1 -   950 grams   (2 lbs 2 oz)
     Day 8 -   1100 grams (2 lbs 7 oz)
     Day 17 - 1225 grams (2 lbs 11 oz)

Paige:
     Day 1 -   835 grams (1 lbs 13 oz)
     Day 8 -   795 grams (1 lbs 12 oz)
     Day 17 - 970 grams (2 lbs 2 oz)

Most of the weight change is probably due to fluid retention/loss.  Also, these weights are probably not totally accurate because they include all of the excess paraphernalia taped to their bodies.

Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year!  Speaking of that, apparently Paige and Aubrey are Dragon babies.  Apparently, waiting to be a Snake didn't cut it for them.