Cruising Along

Wow...A lot has happened since the last update. Sorry to all of you who check in everyday! Holland and Eden are both doing okay, but both have had their ups and downs over the past couple of days. Holland is cruising along with her breathing. She is now on CPAP and breathing well on her own. She was on room air all day today and wasn't needing much extra oxygen. Her biggest issue as of late has been nutrition. Her triglycerides have been running high so they had to stop her lipids. She started feeding again and has been doing okay on 2 cc's of breastmilk every three hours. She'll probably stay on that for a couple of days to make sure she can handle it. She has been having some problems with high levels of direct bilirubin and her doctors are hoping that the breastmilk will be enough to help bring that down. Unfortunately the down side to difficulties with nutrition has been that Holland is looking very scrawny, like a baby bird that has fallen out of the nest. We don't let her looks fool us though. We know that she is a LOT tougher than she looks!

Eden was doing really great over the past couple of days, but had quite a rough day today. It started last night with a lot of secretions in her nose and mouth making it difficult to breathe. She had a pretty scary bradicardia episode last night while her Mom, Dad, and Aunt Laura were there. Today her CO2 levels were much too high and they ended up having to put her back on the ventilator. Much of the day was spent figuring out the appropriate settings to help her get rid of some of that carbon dioxide. When we left the hospital tonight she was starting to look better. On the bright side, the CPAP was making her nose pretty sore and being on the vent will give it time to heal. After giving her a couple of days to rest we'll try the CPAP again. Eden is starting to look like a little chub, isn't she? She is up to full feeds and isn't getting any more IV nutrition. She's up to a full 1 pound 10.5 ounces!