Thursday 11/6/2014

Word of the day: "weening."  Oxygen pressure weened, oxygen percentage- weened, sedation drugs weened, lipids weened!

All of this makes us closer to our goal of getting Ava off the vent.  She is close but not looking like the end of the week like originally planned.  Probably closer to Sunday or Monday.  To get her off the vent there is a fine balance between sedation drugs, vent settings and how much work she is doing on her own.  

Pretty amazing that you can actually watch the machines to see how much she is breathing or how much the vent is breathing for her.  The nurses refer to it as breathing "over" the vent.

They actually went up on her feeds again to 30 mls every 3 hours.  We are still getting quite a bit back but they continue to say that is due to the vent.  

They have laid out a weening schedule for the sedation drugs.  Today was day one of fourteen.  Obviously they will be making daily assessments and will adjust accordingly.  They do something called a NAS evaluation.  Which is basically an assessment to make sure she is not having too bad of withdrawal symptoms.  Babies show withdrawal symptoms much like an addict would to drugs. 

Ava had some very special visitors today!  Thanks for making the trip Mimi & Papa! Xoxo

Also Ava has been very honest in her evaluation of this entire process. 

The boys have been loving having daddy at home with them the past couple nights.  Ryan had a rough day a daycare today, got bit by another kid, and took a header on the playground which resulted in a bloddy fat lip.  

We can only think of one accident report for Mason in the time they have been there. Ryan is surely making up for it with a school record of 5 since August!  

We are so proud!