"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

March 5, 2012

Room Air Trial

Our goal for baby Katea is to slowly try to wein her oxygen needs down so that some day 'hopefully soon' she'll be totally off oxygen.  We haven't been able to do much weining since being home, especially since she had the little set-back of going back to the hospital...and actually, because of that, she's needed a little bit more at times than she had been.

The other day we had some small tiny steps in the right direction and I was so excited and proud of her!

It had been quite a while since her monitor had beeped, which is very very unusual....usually that thing beeps all the time....not only when her oxygen saturation is low or high, but also when she kicks her little feet. A lot of movement makes the sensitive sensor not able to pick up accurate readings, and it beeps and beeps and beeps.  Everyone told me that it would drive me crazy...and it does, but I like having it.  It gives me a huge sense of security and peace of mind that she's breathing like she should be and that she's getting enough oxygen.  As much as I want to kick the oxygen, I'm gonna have a hard time saying goodbye to her monitor...lol.  Anyways, it hadn't beeped in a while....I was sitting there holding her and I was just thinking that she was super content on her 1/8 liter and that she was getting oxygenated like she should...and that everything was great.  Then I look down and see her with her nasal canula in her hand....not anywhere near her face or her little nose.  Funny that I was holding her and she was able to pull the canula hard enough to get out of the tape on her face....and I didn't even notice....horrible right??!!  I immediately grabbed the canula, put it back in her nose....panicing that she hadn't been getting oxygen for who knows how long...then it dawned on me, her monitor was on and it was reading....and it didn't beep once.  She was breathing completely on her own!  :)  As soon as I put the oxygen back on her, she started to high-sat....the monitor started beeping...she was satting at 100% for a couple minutes.  You know that high levels of oxygen are bad for her little eyes, so I turned it down to 1/16 liter.... still high satting....turned it down to 1/32 liter (which is like .003, the lowest you can go)....and she was still high satting.  I decided to completely turn the oxygen off and do a room air trial.  She was amazing!  She kept her saturations betwee 94-98% for almost 25 minutes.  That was the longest ever without oxygen!  After about 25 minutes, she dropped her saturations into the 80's and then the high 70's.  I didn't want her to hang out too low for too long, so I turned the oxygen back on at kept it at 1/16 liter.  Since then she's been between 1/16 and 1/8 liter per minute.  She's making progress....slowly but surely!  It only lasted 25 minutes, but hey, I'll take that 25 minutes of progress anyday!  :)  Way to go baby girl!

2 comments:

MARCIA said...

Yay for progress. She is such an amazing baby. I can't believe how far she's come and to be breathing on her own for 25 minutes is awesome! I get totally lost reading your blogs sometimes with all your medical terminology, yet it amazes me how educated you are in that field. I guess you have to be with the situation you're in, but I honestly think I would not be able to remember all that. You are a great mother with a great child. Again yay for progress!

Tina Tuakoi said...

So happy to hear she's making progress, and that she's home :) Love you baby Katea!