Zero Today.....

Today is a big milestone day:

Today is my original due date (1/4/06), which means Kaitlyn is officially "born" today - her "Gestational Age". All of her developmental milestones will be based on today as her age

Today is exactly 3 months since Kaitlyn and Corinne were actually born however (10/4/05)

She has been in the NICU for 91 days and we have no idea when she will be coming home

Very strange that their birthdates were both on the 4th.

Bronchoscope results - good and bad news.....

Well, the good news is that she recovered fairly quickly. She was very upset (about 2 hours afterwards)...She cried and kicked...I was able to quiet her down by putting her to my breast and she breast fed for about 15 minutes then fell asleep!

I went to pump directly afterwards, and when I came back out, she was again fussy and wide awake...this time I bottle fed her, she only took 25 cc's (out of 60 cc's), but she was so awake. Much, much better than her recovery from the eye surgery.

Bad (or so-so news): One vocal cord is moving and working, but they can't see the other cord. She has some swelling of specific throat parts (Sorry, don't know the medical names) so they can't see one of her cords. They feel that it is paralyzed, however, but they really don't know. They also do see some other areas which are "narrower" than it should be which is probably from the ventilator.

So, in layman’s terms, they don't really know why she isn't crying nor why she has the swelling. They think the swelling could be reflux (however for her swallow test she did not show any reflux). But they don't know if the swelling is causing the cord not to move, as they can't see the cord.

So, she is going to be put on 2 courses of a new steroid (to hopefully help reduce the swelling), and reflux medicine (common for preemies), then possibly re-scope her again in 2-3 weeks.