Peek-A-Boo

 (These are from my camera, but are through the isolette, so kind of blurry, and dark)

 

 

  

 

Brinnlie opened her eyes yesterday,

so we HAD to go today!

 

Wednesday her weight came in at 510 grams, which is 1 lb 2 oz---Today she was 490, down a little, but still looking good.  They took out the line in her foot that was giving her IV nutrition and this means she gets double her feeding = 4 mL of milk every 3 hours.  A full feeding for a baby her size is 5 mL, so she’s getting there.  Hopefully, she’ll get to this point in a couple days and will continue to tolerate it well.

All her labs and stuff they watch look great; she has been needing more oxygen the last couple days, sitting between 40% and 50%.  Every now and again she will have desat episodes in which her oxygen saturation levels fall below the mean they have set for her and it takes a little time to get her back to where she needs to be.  They say this is typical for preemies at this gestation age, but with her being intubated, on the ventilator still, plays a factor too.  She has started showing signs of ‘lung disease’ in which the ‘air sacs’ within the lung get stretched out and can’t do what they’re supposed to do, causing damage.  This is also typical, but the sooner they can extubate her (off the ventilator) the better ‘cause this will allow new tissue to compensate for the damaged and decrease the amount damage.  Scary yes.  We heard ‘lung disease’ and automatically thought of what it means in adults, but hearing that new tissue can grow and compensate for the damaged, is a little reassuring.  This doesn’t mean she’ll be out of the woods respiratory wise, but it’s a lesser concern for now.  So, in order to get extubated, she needs to GROW! 

Otherwise, she’s still hanging in there.

 

We love her SO much, it’s hard to think she’s only been with us for 3 weeks

and

we only get to look at her!