Great strides

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary. I don’t think either of us would have predicted that we’d spend this day taking care of a baby, let alone two preemies. But here we are. And while I wouldn’t have chosen the preemie route if given a choice, I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone.

The good news of the day is that Colin is now making great strides toward coming home. He is continuing to grow well, and is up to 4 pounds 2 ounces — finally getting up to more than half Veronica’s weight (she hit 8 pounds yesterday).

Although they’ve had to increase the pressure on his oxygen (back to 2 liters), Colin remains at 21% oxygen — which is room air. As his nurse today put it, he’s not getting oxygen now, he just has a fan blowing it into his nose.

We have a new doctor in charge in the NICU starting today. Because Colin continues to have a high respiration rate (number of breaths per minute) and he still sounds congested, the doctor wants to wait before weaning him lower on the pressure. She is interested in finding out what is causing Colin’s congestion — something John and I really want too.

Her proposal as a first step is to cut back on the volume of Colin’s feedings a little to see if the extra liquid from the milk/formula may be contributing to his congestion (and breathing problems). So we are going to try scaling back and see whether:

1. He’ll continue to gain weight, and 
2. It makes any difference in his breathing.

I hope it will be that easy, but regardless of whether we hit success on the first try, I’m happy to be starting the detective work to root out the cause, rather than simply treating the symptoms. 

Veronica made her first visit back to the hospital since her discharge. No worries, it was a planned appointment, not an emergency. As you may recall, her head ultrasound on the day before her discharge showed a bleed. Today was the follow up ultrasound to make sure the bleed was resolving, not getting worse.

It’s highly unusual for a baby to have a brain bleed this long after delivery, and both Colin and Veronica had bleeds within the past month. In some ways, this troubles me more than if they had the bleeds right away. I asked the doctor if it could be a sign of some other problem, that both of them had these “late in the game” bleeds, but he didn’t have an answer.

At any rate, both babies’ bleeds were minor — level 1 — and unlikely to cause any problems for them down the road. And Veronica’s ultrasound today showed that the bleeding is not getting worse, and likely is resolving already. Colin’s last ultrasound also came back clean. So one less worry, for now at least.

Colin had another eye exam tomorrow to see whether the retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is progressing (or staying the same or resolving itself). I suppose a reversal at this point is too much to hope for, but I do really hope to hear that his eyes are not getting worse.

I have finally posted new pictures to the album. Of course, both babies have grown a lot in the two weeks since these were taken … maybe I can remember the camera tomorrow to get some new photos.