October 14th

Friday Kate turned 7 weeks old!  It was a great day for her.  She was able to be weaned down from her 6 on the oxygen flow to a 5 and stay stable.  She kept this up for Saturday and Sunday also.  Saturday night she reached 3.4 lbs- she has doubled her birth weight, HOORAY!  She looks and feels so much better with the extra weight on her!  She has been doing great on tolerating her feedings.  She's known for her picky eating by not tolerating some of the fortifiers that are normally offered to preemies.  Today she had her feedings extended to 90 minutes instead of the 45 minutes that she has been on.  This makes it so that her milk volume is fed to her more slowly over a longer period of time through a feeding tube.  The doctor wants to see if this will help her breathing.  By decreasing the amount of milk in her tummy, her stomach will be smaller and hopefully give her diaphragm and lungs more room to breathe.  This will increase the amount of air she can hold in her lungs and she should do better.  Yesterday, her oxygen flow was turned down to a 4.  She only lasted on it for about an hour because she was having so many apneas.  I talked to the respiratory therapist for a minute about this and he said really there is not much of a difference in air flow from a 5 to a 4.  It shouldn't be too hard to wean her down, but she is apparently pretty picky not only about her food, but her air too.  The RT basically said the air-flow at this point is mostly a stimulant to remind her to breath.  She does most of the work on her own-if she'll just remember.  When she was reduced to a 4 she had a hard time remembering to breath.  Today she had to be turned back up to a 6 again, because of her apneas and oxygen saturations were dropping to 40-60.  This was the main reason for the change in her feedings.

Her length has still remained  15.5 inches and her head circumference was 25 cm.  Her head is about the same size as a baseball now.  She was very alert tonight for her 7 pm care- wide eyed and looking around.  She had her nutrition panel done again this morning and everything looks good.  Her hemoglobin has started to rise from 9 to 9.3.  With even such a small rise, she might be able to avoid another blood transfusion.  It should continue to creep up as she starts producing her own blood. 

She is doing so Great with everything!  Such a strong little baby- she's proving herself to be just like her 2nd cousin Nikki:)  I wrote an earlier post about how Kate's middle name is after my cousin's middle name- Elizabeth.  I wanted to name her this because my cousin has been so strong through the last couple months.  In August, her mom passed away unexpectedly the week of her wedding and she has been incredible in the way she has held together and pressed forward.  Her wedding date had been changed to this last Saturday on her Mom's birthday (October 12th).  Nikki was beautiful and there was such a sweet spirit during the ceremony.  I know her mom and brother were with us!!  I'm so happy for her to be married to Brian- I know they will create a great life together.  I'm so grateful for Nikki's example of strength and that my baby Kate is also carrying that legacy on!