Grace's Progress
It occurred to me I hadn't posted in awhile, so here's a status update for my Grace! x-posted to Myspace.
So far she's doing pretty good. She had a bit of a setback on Monday with her blood not filtering out CO2 fast enough, and her hemoglobin levels were a bit low, so they switched her to an oscillating ventilator to help avoid the possibility of bursting one of her tiny lungs by turning the pressure up too high on the other ventilator, and they gave her a blood transfusion to help bolster her red blood cell count. She took to it like a little vampire, unsurprisingly. They also found a bit of inflammation in her intestines that they thought was probably NEC, so to be safe they put her on a 7-day course of antibiotics to clear that up. So far that seems to be working great. The rest of the week has been a lot better, and they actually kept her on the oscillating ventilator for only a day and a half, because she responded so well. Her blood gasses have been normal since then, so they've got her back on the regular ventilator and are talking about possibly weaning her off of it this weekend or next week. They're also talking about starting gavage feedings for her possibly next week when the antibiotic course is finished, which would make me immensely happy. She's gained a little weight on the IV nutrition (she's up to 1 lb 6 oz now), but I can't help but think that real milk would help her gain weight faster, not to mention its other useful properties. Plus, she's got literally a whole shelf in their freezer with two weeks of backstashed milk supply, so she needs to start drinking it! ;)
So, it's a slow but encouraging process to date. I still can't wait to hold her, but once we get moved up there (hopefully Wednesday), it will be easier to go in and spend a lot of time. Right now there isn't much we can do while at the hospital, but once we're able to hold her, and especially whenever she's able to take feedings straight from the breast, I probably won't ever want to leave.
So far she's doing pretty good. She had a bit of a setback on Monday with her blood not filtering out CO2 fast enough, and her hemoglobin levels were a bit low, so they switched her to an oscillating ventilator to help avoid the possibility of bursting one of her tiny lungs by turning the pressure up too high on the other ventilator, and they gave her a blood transfusion to help bolster her red blood cell count. She took to it like a little vampire, unsurprisingly. They also found a bit of inflammation in her intestines that they thought was probably NEC, so to be safe they put her on a 7-day course of antibiotics to clear that up. So far that seems to be working great. The rest of the week has been a lot better, and they actually kept her on the oscillating ventilator for only a day and a half, because she responded so well. Her blood gasses have been normal since then, so they've got her back on the regular ventilator and are talking about possibly weaning her off of it this weekend or next week. They're also talking about starting gavage feedings for her possibly next week when the antibiotic course is finished, which would make me immensely happy. She's gained a little weight on the IV nutrition (she's up to 1 lb 6 oz now), but I can't help but think that real milk would help her gain weight faster, not to mention its other useful properties. Plus, she's got literally a whole shelf in their freezer with two weeks of backstashed milk supply, so she needs to start drinking it! ;)
So, it's a slow but encouraging process to date. I still can't wait to hold her, but once we get moved up there (hopefully Wednesday), it will be easier to go in and spend a lot of time. Right now there isn't much we can do while at the hospital, but once we're able to hold her, and especially whenever she's able to take feedings straight from the breast, I probably won't ever want to leave.