Day 13

Ella is 13 days old today.  She is 29 weeks gestation today.

Happily she has gained weight and is at her birth weight of 970 grams or 2 lbs 2 oz.  Yesterday they added a fortifier to her breastmilk to help her gain weight. Since they added this, she has not tolerated her feedings as well.  She has had higher residuals. Residuals are checked every 3 hours. They check this by pulling back on her NG tube 3 hours after her last feeding. They want to see her digest at least 50% of her last feeding.  Since her residuals have been  higher they are going to remove the fortifier from the breastmilk with hopes she tolerates her feedings better.

The plan today is for her to be extubated or for the breathing tube to be removed. She had a chest xray this morning which shows some increased haziness on her right ling suspicious for pneumonia.  They will put her back on CPAP, but have given us a heads up in cases such as this she may not tolerate the CPAP and may need to be placed back on the ventilator. However, if they just leave her on the ventilator it is more difficult for the pneumonia to get better since she has a foreign body in her airway. She will be on antibiotics for 7-10 days.

They will check her with periodic chest x-rays but that element may take awhile to clear up so she may appear better before her xray gets better.

Ryan and I visited today and had a nice visit. I did kangaroo care which she tolerates very well.

I cannot wait to bring her home to us. For the most part, we have to keep in mind that she is going to have setbacks at times over the next several weeks. Lets pray for small setbacks with steps forward. Lets avoid all the big setbacks.