The Ride Continues

It has been a while since our last update and quite a bit has happened. I can't emphasize enough how true the statement is about the NICU being a roller coaster. Although Haylee has been doing great with very little set backs, Rylee continues to encounter bumps in the road. Each day has been a guessing game, whether or not it will be a good news day or bad news day.  Overall the girls are doing great and we couldn't be more pleased with their fight and determination.

Let's go back a couple of days to our not so exciting 1:00 am phone call. Any time our phone rings at night from the NICU we are both holding our breath anxiously awaiting to hear the situation. For this particular phone call they needed consent from us to give Rylee a blood transfusion. It turns out that Rylee was continuing to have episodes where her saturation (oxygen in the blood) and heart rate continued to fall. After running labs it was noted that her hemoglobin was low. After the transfusion she seemed to do a little bit better, though we couldn't hold her because she had another IV in her arm. The following day her IV was out and they attempted to take her off of her NG oxygen. As we were leaving she was doing well without her oxygen, and we looked forward to holding her gain today. Unfortunately when we got in today she was back on oxygen, though not just the nasal tube, but the full CPAP. This was a huge surprise to us and a shock to see. Again we can't hold her, but we know it is for the best and we only want to see her improve. Along with the CPAP for oxygen they are going to try her on an antacid as a means to help with some of her problems. They believe a lot of her issues may be related to her severe acid reflux. Lastly, she is continuing to gain weight, she finally reached the 3 lbs mark a few days ago and is up to 3 lbs 4 oz.

Now for little Ms. Haylee. She has been doing so well the last few days and we could not be happier. We have slowly been bottle feeding her, some days have been a little better than others, but we continue to try. She has pretty much reached all of the requirements to go home, with the exception of taking each feed from the bottle. She is doing amazing at keeping her own temperature, and has moved from the incubator to a bassinet. That was a great sight to see this morning.  We did have a slight set back today as we tried to bottle feed her. She had a little episode and her Stats started to drop, so the nurses made the choice to do her feed over the tube. While I was holding her she did have a bigger episode, so much so that she went blue and the RN had to give her some oxygen. She rebounded quickly and Ryan and I were able to hold her again, with no further incident.