"Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. I promise you that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to you, each other, your children, your grand-children and others throughout the generations. Remember, the Savior chastised those who failed to record important events." --President Spencer W. Kimball

December 1, 2011

Tube-less

Have I mentioned how amazing my baby Katea is??  If I haven't.....SHE IS AMAZING!!  Today was an amazing day....really, this week has been an amazing week!  After she got over the trauma of her immunizations, and the massive amounts of boogers that were clogging her nasal prongs.....they were able to get her back down to where she was at....12 breaths a minute from the machine.  She did so well with that that they decided to keep up with their plan of weining 3 breaths every 12 hours......until she gets to zero.

When I walked in her room on Monday, she was on 9 breaths.  That night she went down to 6 breaths....Tuesday morning down to 3........and Tuesday night down to zero!!  Yay!  They wanted to keep her there for a little bit to make sure she was still gonna tolerate it before making any big changes...especially since that meant she was doing ALL the work on her own!  She did awesome....so they planned to move forward.  The plan was to turn her PEEP down to 5 on Wednesday and let her stay on the lowest PEEP and zero breaths....if she did well with that, then they would take her nasal prongs out, and put her on a high flow nasal canula....which is what most people have when they're on oxygen...the two small prongs in their nose and the hose goes behind their ears.  That goal seemed so far away just a week ago....but now it was almost going to happen! 

She did awesome all day on Wednesday....she was breathing on her own and her Fi02 was below 30% all day long.....so guess what???!!!!  Today......Thursday December 1st, 2011.....66 days old, 2 months 5 days old.....almost 35 weeks gestation.....she's officially TUBE-FREE!!  Whoo-hoo!  No more tube down her throat, no more tubes(prongs) down her nose to the back of her throat.......just the nasal canula giving her oxygen to support her!  She's amazing and I'm so proud of her!

They put her on a high flow nasal canula....starting out getting 5 liters of oxygen......she did so well with that, that they were able to go down to 4 liters already today!  We're just gonna hang out there for a little while to make sure she continues to tolerate it....and we'll just wein slowly from there....so far, so good!  She's been doing awesome and her Fi02 has been mostly under 30%...which is exactly where we want it!  Once she gets down to 2 liters of oxygen, thats when she gets to start breastfeeding.....that's our next big goal!   I can't say it enough.....she's AMAZING!

Other changes she's made..... she's up to 32ml of breastmilk every 3 hours fortified to 27 calories, with betaprotein....and they're back to giving it to her over 30 minutes instead of an hour.  They are going to start weining her hydrocortizone, and we're praying this time, since she's bigger, she'll tolerate it better than last time!  They've added iron to her vitamins.......and she's gaining weight!!  Today she weighed 1865 grams, which translates into 4lbs.2oz.!!

This was an amazing week....she's making amazing progress....I'm so happy!

(Wednesday night w/ the nasal IMV)

(Today on the high flow nasal canula!)


 

6 comments:

Mauga Fam said...

That is such great news!!! I am so happy that she is doing so well:)

The Vakautakakala's said...

That is so exciting!!
Keep up the good work baby!!

Aki said...

That's the way Baby Katea!! Keep it up baby girl!!! =)

Tina Tuakoi said...

She is amazing! It's so great to see how far she has come. You and Ova are amazing as well!

shaunita said...

Yay!!! What an important milestone. She IS an amazing little girl.

pwincessdi said...

Up to 4lbs! OMG who would've thought from 1lb 12oz in 2 months?...she is doing great Monica. I'm so happy for her! Great job Monica for having the faith in your lil miracle :) She is almost home YAY!!