Tuesday, February 24, 2009

2 Steps Forward, one step back...

From Daddy: Reader beware: you are receiving this information through my filters which tend to mix a few of the details up and skew a few of the more technical terms. Today I told someone that Nora was able to be on the "canola" for several hours today. Oops!

The steps forward include Nora getting to do more Kangaroo care with Mom and breathing with just the cannula. Ryan also seems to be doing better with breathing and is moving closer to getting to spend some time with Mom and Dad holding him.

But, they do have heart murmurs, and an echo confirmed that they both have PDA. (In the high school that I teach at that stands for Public Display of Affection.) Here we are talking about two small holes in the heart that are necessary when babies are in the womb, but need to close up once they are born. They are going to give three doses of medicine (something like Advil I guess) that will help these holes close up. They will do another echo Thursday to see. Please pray that it does.

Mom goes home from hospital today, which is also a step forward even though I am sure we will both be upset that we are leaving here without our babies.

A personal thanks to all the wonderful people in our lives that have been calling, praying and visiting.  We got visits from Don and Jaimie today.

Other updates from jessica: Nora was doing OK with her oral-gastric tube feedings of mommy's milk all day yesterday, but they found that she wasn't moving things along as fast as they'd have liked and her feedings were held today.  We also thought Ryan would get some o-g tube feedings today, but with the PDA, they are going to hold off until it's closed.  Ryan did get his arterial line out of his arm today, so mom was able to hold him.  He does have the CPAP on and has a PICC line for IV nutrition, but the rest of the stuff is wires for monitors.  Both babies are just on caffeine (to help their immature brains remember to breathe) and IV nutrition (and the indomethacin that John alluded to above--but hopefully that'll be all done by tomorrow and the PDA will have closed).

Here's our little Nora on the nasal cannula...
Here's Jess with Ryan during his first kangaroo time--you can't really see him b/c of the CPAP contraption--it's really just in his nose, but the whole helmet thing keeps it in place in his nose and there's a chin strap to keep the air from blowing into his nose and directly out his mouth--so his mouth stays closed and the pressured air goes into his lungs
 Visitors today: Don

4 comments:

  1. I love them already. =)

    Continuously praying for you all.

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  4. Great to see Ryan hanging out with mom!

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