Voodoo Magic

{These are a few of my favorite sleepy snapshots from the past couple of days}

We had another very eventful day today.  Ellie is now 4lbs 6oz - she is getting some serious chunk for a premie and we love it!  Volunteer Services dropped by and gave us two great gifts.  Well, one was great and one was....creepy :/  The great gift was a book on premies - we are talking textbook capacity that has already been a great reference for her stay now and will service as a great reference for us once she is home.  The creepy gift was extremely well intended - it was called a "snoogle" and you were supposed to wear it so get your scent on it and it was to remain with her while you were away.  Really great idea.  Except it looked like a baby, pastel dementor (an evil creature from Harry Potter that sucks happiness and even your soul out of you). Needless to say, since it reminded us of that we couldn't bear the thought of leaving it with our sweet baby.  And she is such great friends with Babette (her bunny in the second pictured above) we just wear her while we are there so she will smell like us when she snuggles with Ellie when we leave.  

We also had a very successful time with the lactation consultant today.  Ellie is getting really good - I can't wait for her to be able to finally be able to feed orally!  We are still waiting on getting her lungs mature enough to do it.  I wish I had a time table to share, but we still don't know when that will be.

She seems to be stumping the respiratory therapists.  After being on high flow oxygen for a week without much improvement they decided to put her on a low flow oxygen cannula.  We think she has been hating and fighting the high flow cannula.  They are going to try her on low flow to see if she will do well with a more gentler flow.  As I found out this afternoon when her cannula fell out of her nose, her oxygen saturation is perfect on room air when she is calm, asleep, and on her belly.  She held out perfectly for 30 minutes.  I called in the nurse and respiratory therapist to see it.  When she wakes, squirms, or gets uncomfortable she holds her breath and then her oxygen saturation drops to the low 80s.  We put her back on the low flow oxygen and she went right back up to 100.  She started squirming again in her crib right before I left late this afternoon and her oxygen level went back down.  I picked her up and held her on her belly on my chest and she went right back up to 100.  I looked at the respiratory therapist and asked why it was happening.  His response: "I have no idea.  This is some kind of voodoo magic.  I am stumped because I don't know any science to explain this."  Great - just what I wanted to hear. We ended up putting her on her belly in her crib.  Her sats stayed up, she didn't squirm, and quickly fell asleep.  

Her chest x-ray this week showed good improvement in her lungs from last week.  They are going to keep watching her and her patterns closely to see what they can find.  With the pace she has been going, we have pretty much accepted now that she will more than likely be in the NICU until her due date (mid August).  The good news is that we seem to be progressing again. At our visit with her tonight her oxygen level was really good and she was still on the low flow cannula.  For the last week we felt stuck in the mud!  It feels good to feel like we are moving forward again.