Better day

Today has been a little more stable, thank goodness. Colin has been tolerating the feeds, so they are going to start increasing the amount tonight. He is still getting only a tiny little bit of milk, but we don’t want to go too fast for fear of developing another gas bubble. It sounds like they may be planning to stop the antibiotics tonight or tomorrow, but John wasn’t able to find out if we’ll be able to start the steroids again soon. 

Colin had a very bad episode last night, during which his saturation levels dropped very low, and the nurses couldn’t bring him back up. They had to “bag” him (manually pump oxygen into his lungs) to get him breathing properly again. Because he was having so much trouble, the doctor decided to take out his ventilator tube (it turned out to be clogged with mucus at the end, where the suction doesn’t reach) and then intubate him again. 

So he is now very sensitive again to everything, and we are back to not being able to hold him. He was fairly calm while I was there this morning and his saturation levels remained good, but he had another episode this afternoon.  


Veronica is doing very well off the oxygen. (I may not have mentioned this development, but they took her off completely on Saturday.) She seems to occasionally hold her breath, but is otherwise breathing fine. The blood transfusion also seems to have helped with the bradys, because she is not having as many now. 


This afternoon, she had great success with the bottle. Previously we had been able to get her to suck maybe three or four times — she mainly licked the nipple, and looked very surprised and a little scared when the milk came out. That didn’t happen with the pacifier, or her thumb or the blanket. Today at her 3:00 feeding, however, she drank 30 ml from the bottle. 

Right now, she tends to be awake for about every other feeding. Obviously, getting her to drink from the bottle doesn’t work well while she is sleeping, so the nurse is only trying when Veronica seems alert. She is still very young to be mastering the bottle feeding, so we will continue to take baby steps on this as well. But I am happy that she seems to be progressing well.