Progress

The girls are doing well. Both are off the CPAP and on a high low nasal cannula. This makes them look much less tragic since they only have small tubes going into their noses now. Next step is a low flow cannula and then, eventually, weaning them off to room air. They both responded well to the medicine for their heart defect and both of their arteries closed. Both are also taking breast milk. Hopefully Evelyn will be taking in enough to get off her IV tomorrow with greatly lowers her risk of infection. Clara's a couple days behind Evelyn because she kept getting nasty gunk in her feeding tube thanks to the CPAP blowing stuff around. They got their brain scans today to look for IVH -we should get results back later today or tomorrow. Evelyn's had some apnea episodes and is now on caffeine. I thought I'd help things out by adding more Dr. Pepper into my diet before I pump :) Anyway, they said apnea is pretty normal at this stage as they wouldn't need to be remembering to breathe if they were still inside me. They'll just continue to watch for it and treat it when it comes up.

So, all that's really left is getting them off the IVs, getting their respiratory requirements down, and teaching them how to suck/eat. Once those are done, they just need to grow and get stronger.

I think that's it. Greg and I are excited about their progress. We're also very happy that we get to hold them a little now - once a day.

Take care,
Kris