3rd time's the charm......???

11/5/05
Kaitlyn's off the ventilator again!

Liz watching over Kaitlyn

A short break off the CPAP...Taken Saturday 11/5 before getting a breathing treatment. The CPAP really pushes on Kaitlyn's nose.

Another short break from the CPAP

"Mom, I hate the flash from the camera....!"

On the CPAP, Brian and I call her our little scuba diver, as the CPAP looks like a snorkel.

Well, good news finally. I guess I waited a few days this time to post just to make sure, but Kaitlyn is again off the ventilator. This time she decided herself that she had it with the tube down her throat and pulled it out herself!

Funny enough there is a another twinless twin right near Kaitlyn in the NICU that was supposed to have his tube pulled on Thursday and he pulled it out himself on wed, so Kaitlyn decided she couldn’t be left behind and pulled hers out on Thursday. We got there about an hour after it happened, and she was nice and calm and sleeping (good news to start).

Since then, her blood gas levels have been great (meaning she’s processing the CO2 out of her system really well). She’s on the CPAP again (which doesn’t breathe for her, but helps make breathing easier by keeping her lungs inflated so it’s not as hard to take a breathe. Her oxygen intake is anywhere from 29% - 45%. Room air is about 26%. And she’s breathing fairly regularly, (not all the time) but generally, nice deep breaths (still a little rapid) but the rate has been coming down. Think of yourself breathing, if you take too fast of breaths you don’t get in as much oxygen, so it’s more important for her to breathe slowly and deeply. Her rate is still fast for her still but better than on Thursday.

She’s had a lung x-ray that looked good. The docs held her feeding for the first 24 hours as to not take any effort away from breathing. (As oxygen goes to her digestive system), but she’s taking breast milk again. It started back at 2 cc’s every 4 hours, now (on Saturday) she’s at 4 cc’s every 2 hours. That’s about a tablespoon or a bit more. They will increase the amount of milk 1 cc every 12 hours until she gets to 11 cc’s every 2 hours.

She’s much calmer in general now too, even when the nurses have to do things to her. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll actually be able to hold her in the next few days! Wow, to finally hold my daughter that was born a month ago yesterday (10/4/05).

Updates on Liz:

Remember me talking about my eyes and that I couldn’t see? Well, it’ ends up that the contacts that I received right when I was pregnant (it was a new box) were defective! Can you believe it…this whole time I’ve been on bed rest I’ve been wearing my glasses because I thought pregnancy changed my eyes, and I couldn’t leave the bed to go to the eye doc….it ends up that the box was defective. So, I’m happy to report that my vision is the exact same as before, and I’m able to see again.

I drove yesterday for the 4th time, and even went to a work function that is mandatory. Figured it would have been very hard to make up the meeting, so I went. It was a strange and surreal feeling. The few people that I saw, (I purposely came right when the meeting started) were all so wonderful and gave me big hugs and said they have been thinking about me all the time. I had to quickly leave to go home afterwards as of course I had to pump.

My wound…..Well, it is continuing to heal, Brian says, it’s definitely half the size when he started having to pack it. I of course still can’t look at it. The doc hasn’t given me an idea of how much longer it’s going to take to heal – I can’t wait, as I’m really tired of wearing maternity pants that are way too big on me. But I need something that allows for the room of the bandage and isn’t too restricting. The few maternity pants I had were summer pants (capris) and now that it’s gotten colder, I don’t really have anything to wear.