Happy Holidays!

Day 63

Emma has continued to show some slight signs of improvement.  They have been able to wean her down a little bit on her oxygen but are taking things verrrry slowly.  She still has a long way to go, but we are hopeful that she will continue on the road to recovery.  Her latest chest x-rays still show the pneumonia mostly in her right upper lung.  The rest of her lungs are still immature and show signs of the chronic lung disease, but they do look much better overall, especially compared to the x-rays from when she was very young.  She has completed the antibiotics, so she doesn't have any more IVs in her.  They will continue to monitor her bloodwork and take more x-rays to see how things progress.  But for now, we're just giving her time to rest and recover! 

Despite the fact that we are all waiting patiently for Miss Emma to improve, Emma herself has NOT been very patient.  We spoke to the nurses last night and found out that Emma had decided to go ahead and extubate herself!!!  Apparently she was able to loosen the tape around her tube and pull it out!  They got it back in pretty quickly and Emma was fine throughout the whole ordeal, but they now call her "Houdini" and agree that we are going to have our hands full.  She is definitely fed up with being intubated, but hopefully over the next several days the doctors will be able to extubate her (without Emma's help). 

Emma has continued to do well with her feedings and is gaining weight.  She is now getting 9 mL/hour and is up to 1320g (2 lbs., 14 1/2 oz.) - looks like she'll be hitting the three pound mark in a couple days!!! 

In addition, Emma is getting closer to fully maintaining her own body temperature!  Up until this point, the incubator has done most of the work to maintain her temperature.  She has been wearing a temperature probe, which is the white wire connected to her with a silver disc on it - usually the nurses cut it into the shape of a heart.  This constantly would read her temperature, and would increase or decrease the temperature in the isolette based on her temperature to keep her around 98.6.  Now, the isolette is on "manual mode", where it is set to a certain temperature (right now about 92 degrees) and Emma is maintaining her temperature by herself.  They will continue to wean down the internal temperature until they get to the equivalent of "room air".  Generally, when she's around 1800g, they will switch her into a bassinet, which is an open-air crib.  This is as long as there are no other complications going on and she'll be evaluated at that point to make sure she can tolerate it; the weight goal is generally just an estimate.  Also, when she gets off the jet ventilator, she'll be able to wear clothes!  We are very excited about that. 

Right now Emma is wrapped up in a blanket to keep her warm.  She doesn't seem to be thrilled with it, but hasn't ripped off the blanket too much.  She is able to stick her feet out underneath, so she seems satisfied with that. 

So it seems like things are starting to slowly turn around for Emma.  Emma arrived 17 weeks early, and the general estimate for when she comes home is her original due date.  She is 9 weeks old today, so if all goes well, we are more than halfway to the point of bringing her home!  We have a lot of work to do to get to that point, but she has been such a fighter that we are sure the next several weeks will fly by. 

We have tried to bring a little bit of holiday spirit to Emma and her nurses.  Since we won't be able to have her home for Christmas, we'll bring Christmas to her! 

Even Curious is getting into the holiday spirit!

 

His hat may be a little big though....

Peekaboo!

Strike a pose!  (what a little diva!)