A step back

Overall both Brandon and Katelyn are doing well. However, Brandon has been struggling and so he was re-intubated today and placed back on the ventilator. He has been on the borderline to returning to the ventilator ever since they took him off. He has to work to hard to breath. His recent X-Rays have shown “wet lungs” and this can also make it even harder to breath. They gave him some medication and adjusted his fluids. Even thought it didn’t keep him off of the ventilator his lungs looked much better today. The deciding factor was his blood test done today. His CO2 levels where high and that is an indication that he isn’t exhaling what he should. The doctors and nurses worked hard to keep him off the ventilators, not only because it is good progress, but also because the longer he is on a ventilator the more damage can be done to his lungs. While it was disappointing it really isn’t that bad. They will give him a while to rest and grow and try again soon.

Katelyn is progressing well. They have been reducing the length of her feedings. They went from continuous to three hours of feeding and one off. Yesterday they took the next step went to 2-hour feedings. She is handling it well and they should take the next step soon. Here hemangioma seems to be responding well because it is getting smaller.

Katelyn is getting spoiled already. She loves to be held and suck on her pacifier. She also can get quite mad when anyone is bugging her. Tonight she was really mad when I was changing her diapers but then she took a bath. She LOVES taking a bath. She quiets right down and sits calmly, right up until the time when we take her out. Below is some video of Katelyn taking a tub bath. It is a large file (15M) so I would only suggest downloading it if you have a really good internet connection.

http://www.bla-dam.com/Katelynbath2.MOV

Something interesting:

We have gotten to know many of the nurses well. One of them was telling Amy some interesting stories. Occasionally a NICU parent will bring in baked good for everyone to eat. This particular nurse won’t eat them unless she knows the parents really well. That seems reasonable but the reason why shocked me. On more than one occasion the mother would announce, after the food had been eaten, that now everyone had extra anti-bodies because she had used her breast milk to bake. Really. I’m not making this stuff up.