Tuesday 10/28/14

Ava has made it down to 60% oxygen assitance!  Her numbers were dynamite this morning, a bit low this afternoon and back to rock star status this evening.  The docs have warned us that this can be the hard part because it just takes time- for her lungs to heal.  

Her x-Ray and echo from today came back with "mild" improvement which is good- again, slow and steady wins the race.  She has done really well with eating the breast milk kepping down all 10mls they have given her (through the feeding tube).  

The docs also gave permission to take out her back up PIC line.  According to Jill (one of our nurses) this is just a positive sign they are happy where she is at!  From my understanding they were able to put two PIC lines in her when she was first admitted (they continue to use the other).  These are essentially IVs that go deep into your body to larger blood vessels or organ areas.  They are extremely important to get in place on newborns because their veins don't hold up as well- with typical IVs.  Once you get these in they usually always last/don't clog until you take them out.  Anyway, it's important to have access to them but nurses also want to minimize the amount of tubes going in because they are all a risk for infection.  So they took it out!  Removing some of these lines gets us one step closer to holding her as well! 

We are so happy that she continues to have long periods of time with her eyes open and moving her arms and legs.  Docs said this is an great indication that all of her brain functions are in tact.  They will eventually do an EEG to confirm all is ok, this will test the electronic activity of her brain.  Liezel said they won't even attempt this until she is more stable.  

We have been learning the ins and outs of the NICU and how babies get assigned nurses and how the rankings of doctors happens.  I swear I would have been lost if it weren't for Grey's Anatomy!  So I have mentioned a couple nurses several times and wanted to explain.  Liezel is our Primary Nurse so she will have Ava everytime she works for the duration of her stay.  And then Jill and Keri are Ava's Associate nurses.  The two of them hopefully work when Lizel is not working.  All three of them are fabulous!

 

 

I will get into the whole world of Nurse practitioners, Residents, Fellows, and Attendings at a later date -- i have been out of the Greys loop for the past 2 weeks so I need to brush up on who is Meredith, Christina, Mc Steamy, and Mc Dreamy in my new NICU life... 

Mason and Ryan came up again today with Nana and Mimi.  We played for a long while in the Comer's Children's Center- it's basically a children's wonderland full of every kind of toy and activity known to man.  The boys painted rocks, played Halloween bingo and their favorite- rearranged the train table.  We hung at the RMDH and had dinner together...  They are doing great all things considered.  Ryan has started asking, "when is baby Hava done?"  I could eat him up!  

Thank you for all of the care packages, cards, emails, texts, FB messages... Ava is one lucky girl to have so much love and support around her.  So are we! 💗

The happy baby sleep pose...