Going Home!!!

A lot has happened since we had the chance to write a post last.  Mae did round the corner and is doing much, much better.  They took her central line out of her belly button and put another peripheral IV in her foot, but just for her antibiotics.  The rest of the time they capped it and had her off the IV so she had one less wire that she was hooked up to.

Her time on the new air machine, the Optiflow, was pretty short lived.  She was on it for that night and did really well.  So that morning she was already on room air at 21% oxygen and they turned down the pressure from 3 liters to 2.  She was on that for about 2 hours and doing perfect, so they turned her down to 1 liter of pressure.  About an hour later, they decided she was doing so well that the doctor decided to take her off the Optiflow machine and just put her on a bubbler off the wall air.  But it took a while to get her hooked up while she was off the Optiflow, and her stats didn't dip at all, so instead of being on another nasal cannula and one more tube, she was taken off the air completely. She has been great with the breathing ever since!

Once she was off the air, we got to hold her a lot more, so we got some good quality snuggle time with our little girl.  She got her last dose of antibiotics Saturday morning at 10, so her IV came out. At that point the only wires or tubes were her feeding tube, her pulse ox monitor, and her breathing monitors.

I came home Saturday afternoon so I could preach at church on Sunday, and Beth stayed at the hospital.  When I left, they said that her breathing issues were all taken care of and her eating was the only thing left.  They said she needed to be able to take all her feedings orally and gain weight.  Throughout the day on Friday and Saturday, she had a few feedings where she did really well, but also had a few she had to take through the feeding tube because she just couldn't seem to wake up to eat a few times.  Part of the problem is they wanted her to be acting hungry before she could even try to eat orally, so if she wasn't waking up before hand, they just fed her with her tube.

But throughout the night Saturday night was a different story.  Beth texted me early this morning (on Sunday) and said that she had taken all her feedings orally throughout the night and had done really well.  They took her feeding tube out this morning and they just finished her car seat test to make sure her stats would stay up while she was in it.  She did awesome!

They just weighed her, and she had gained weight, which means we get to take our little girl home tonight!  Beth is about to feed her and then we will finish up the paperwork to go home.  God is good!!!

Rounding the Corner

All through the night last night Mae did really great. The doctor told us that at some point kids in Mae's position usually round a corner and start doing drastically better, and last night seemed to be that for Mae.

Her numbers on the monitor have been great, she stayed in the 90's all night on her pulse ox. Her respiration monitor has been jumping all over the place, but they figured out that it was picking up her heartbeat on that lead, so all it amounted to was a lot of beeping all night.

They tested her blood gas levels again and they were really good, so they took her off the CPAP and put her on a newer type of machine called an Optiflow that is supposed to allow them to use much lower flows without the risk of putting fluid in their lungs. Mae is doing great on the new system, her numbers didn't even falter.

When the doctors came to do rounds today he told us that he was very impressed with the progress she had made.  He also told us that there was some concern that she could have an infection of some kind. She had a blood test that tested for inflammation levels and it came back a little high, which is an indicator that there could be an infection, possibly even pnemonia, that has been causing her progress to be so slow up to this point. So for now they are leaving her on the antibiotics and they are going to run that test again before and after they give her the medicine. He did say that the chances of that being the case are very slim, mostly because Beth's water didn't break before the c-section.

They are going to take the central line in her belly button out and try to get another IV location on one of her arms. But they are not going to give her constant fluid, so it will be at least one tube she won't be hooked up to all the time.

The other good news is he told us that we can start holding her as much as we can. Which is great news, because Beth has held her a couple of times, but only for about 30 minutes total. And I held her for a couple minutes after she was born and once to pass her back to the nurse from Beth. So we are both really excited to get some quality cuddle time with our little girl.

Things are definitely looking up!