Day 53: Off CPAP

Emma in her Christmas Eve outfit. I will have Dave post a video of their Christmas outfit.

Adalyn in her Christmas Eve outfit. The onesie says "Who needs Santa, I've got grandparents"

Sorry the updates have not been as regular. We were quite busy with Christmas festivities so unfortunately the blog took a back seat for a couple days. But we are back and doing well. Around 5pm yesterday Emma was taken off CPAP. For the past couple days the nurses and respirtory therapists kept asking why Emma was still on CPAP. They kept waiting and waiting for one of the doctors to try her off. Well yesterday Emma got at least 4 "drinks" through her CPAP. This means a huge build up of water in the CPAP tubes got rapidly shot up her nose. This is not supposed to happen and Emma did not appreciate it when it did. She would cry and retch and alarm and...well it was not pretty and very hard for mom and dad to watch. Needless to say the forth time it happened the respiratory therapist was fed up and called the neonatologist to find out if they could give Emma a break from the CPAP and see how she did. Well Dr. L wanted her taken off of it completely and only put her back on if she was not doing well. So that is what they have done. Emma has done well. She had about a dozen brady alarms last night since coming off, but they were all brief, self-resolved, and she has been maintaining her oxygen saturation on room air. Praise God! Pray that Emma continues to do well off the CPAP, pray that God keep her strong and breathing good so that she does not have to go back on CPAP.

On another note yesterday was again bath day and Emma decided to give me a run for my money. The girls get glorified sponge baths in their isolettes becase they are not big enough to be in an open crib yet. So for the baths we put down some absorbent pads underneath the girls to absorb the water. When I am ready to clean their bunners I take off their diapers and they lay naked until the bunner cleaning has finished. Well, when I took off Emma's diaper in preperation for this she had a big poopy diaper. So I cleaned her up from this, turned to give the diaper to the nurse and looked down to find that Emma had pooped again. All over the pad, and the seconds she had were enough for her to stick both feet in it as well as drag all her wires through it. Good thing she is so cute :) It took me forever to get that cleaned up and the hardest part was figuring out where to start. I had just gotten it all cleaned up and put a new pad underneath her when she pooped again. Thankfully I saw it coming this time so we were able to keep her feet and wires out of it this time. What a little stinker...quite litterally! Thankfully Adalyn's bath was much less uneventful.

Adalyn continues to do well off the CPAP and on room air. Her feedings are going at 11 mL per hour and she is tolerating that well. Hopefully sometime this week they will try compressing her feedings again. Her weight last night was 3 lbs 14 oz (1760 grams) and her length was 16 3/4 inches.

Emma's feedings are still at 9.5 mL per hour and for the most part she is doing well. She still retches at times and will spit up small amounts of gastric contents, but the nurses are wondering if this will improve off the CPAP. The CPAP gives her really thick saliva and lots of it which she gags on which makes her retch which at times makes her spit up. So maybe without the CPAP she will not gag as often and maybe not retch/spit up as often either. Emma's weight tonight was 3 lbs 7 oz (1565 grams) and her length was 16 1/2 inches.

Please continue to pray that God help Adalyn and Emma grow and develop well. As I asked above, pray that Emma continues to do well off CPAP so that she can stay off. Pray that God helps them to have less alarms each day. Continue to pray that He protect them from infection. And please join us in praising Him for their wonderful growth and that they are both off CPAP!

I also just want to take a moment to thank God for blessing this family with a great first Christmas. And I want to thank Him for such a wonderful and supportive husband. I cannot imagine going through any of this without him.