The News As Of Thursday
For those of you in my email address book, the following post will be mostly recap. It has been edited very slightly from the original message I sent out last Thursday, but there is no new information in it. What I'm doing here is preserving this text as a sort of baseline from which to go forward with updates on Miss Ainsleigh's medical condition. There will be another post with new informaiton in it in just a few minutes.
Ainsleigh is almost three weeks early; she was due on the 24th and born on the 5th. That's technically "full term" and wouldn't normally trigger an automatic, lengthy stay in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). However, little Ainsleigh just didn't want to wake up and make a fuss in the operating room. After a few minutes of shallow breathing and no crying in the OR, the nurses decided to take her into NICU.
The doctors there told us Monday night that the central problem was her breathing, which was too fast and too shallow. Monday afternoon and evening, this fast, shallow breathing wasn't even enough to properly oxygenate her blood. In the Monday pictures, you'll see a sort of plastic dome over her head. This is an oxygen tent; in order to make her breathing more productive, the doctors used this tent to create a little microenvironment with 50% oxygen content.
Almost as soon as they put her in the tent, the doctors started slowly reducing the oxygen content. At about 2AM Tuesday, they brought the oxygen content in the tent down to 21%, the same as atmospheric O2 content, and removed the tent. Some time later they also decided that she was holding her body temperature well enough and moved her from the baby warmer to an ordinary crib. Note that the Tuesday morning pictures have her out of the tent and wrapped in a blanket.
Tuesday morning, however, the doctors were still concerned that she'd be unable to coordinate breathing and eating, so they were still feeding her through the IV tube. Tuesday afternoon at 2PM they decided to try feeding her for the first time. She's got to take 45mL of formula every three hours to be released from NICU. She's very sleepy, though, and it's hard to keep her awake and focused on eating for long enough to get that much formula in her. This, and a continuing problem with her blood oxygen saturation falling while she eats, is the reason she's still confined to NICU.
The picture as of Thursday was mixed. To get the necessary amount of formula in her, the doctors have put in a feeding tube so the food can be pumped directly into her stomach. This has allowed them to take out the IV and should help her gain strength and weight. After a brief time off of oxygen altogether, her mealtime breathing problems caused them to put her back on oxygen (this time through a cannula, one of those little things that goes in her nose) late Wednesday. She gets the minimum amount of oxygen possible, but just can't quite seem to get off of it altogether.
Anyway, that's where were at on Thursday afternoon. To get out of NICU and go home, she's got to get entirely off of the oxygen and begin drinking ~45mL of formula on her own, without the tube, every three hours. We're not there yet, and we're not sure when we will be. In the meantime, we're allowed to peek in on her whenever we want, and to hold her for half an hour at feeding times (ie, every three hours). Sarah was discharged from the hospital Friday, but stayed on in a kind of hotel room across the hall from NICU for an extra couple of days. We were hopeful that Ainsleigh and Sarah would come home, together, on Sunday or Monday. That didn't happen, of course, as I'll discuss in just a moment.
Ainsleigh is almost three weeks early; she was due on the 24th and born on the 5th. That's technically "full term" and wouldn't normally trigger an automatic, lengthy stay in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). However, little Ainsleigh just didn't want to wake up and make a fuss in the operating room. After a few minutes of shallow breathing and no crying in the OR, the nurses decided to take her into NICU.
The doctors there told us Monday night that the central problem was her breathing, which was too fast and too shallow. Monday afternoon and evening, this fast, shallow breathing wasn't even enough to properly oxygenate her blood. In the Monday pictures, you'll see a sort of plastic dome over her head. This is an oxygen tent; in order to make her breathing more productive, the doctors used this tent to create a little microenvironment with 50% oxygen content.
Almost as soon as they put her in the tent, the doctors started slowly reducing the oxygen content. At about 2AM Tuesday, they brought the oxygen content in the tent down to 21%, the same as atmospheric O2 content, and removed the tent. Some time later they also decided that she was holding her body temperature well enough and moved her from the baby warmer to an ordinary crib. Note that the Tuesday morning pictures have her out of the tent and wrapped in a blanket.
Tuesday morning, however, the doctors were still concerned that she'd be unable to coordinate breathing and eating, so they were still feeding her through the IV tube. Tuesday afternoon at 2PM they decided to try feeding her for the first time. She's got to take 45mL of formula every three hours to be released from NICU. She's very sleepy, though, and it's hard to keep her awake and focused on eating for long enough to get that much formula in her. This, and a continuing problem with her blood oxygen saturation falling while she eats, is the reason she's still confined to NICU.
The picture as of Thursday was mixed. To get the necessary amount of formula in her, the doctors have put in a feeding tube so the food can be pumped directly into her stomach. This has allowed them to take out the IV and should help her gain strength and weight. After a brief time off of oxygen altogether, her mealtime breathing problems caused them to put her back on oxygen (this time through a cannula, one of those little things that goes in her nose) late Wednesday. She gets the minimum amount of oxygen possible, but just can't quite seem to get off of it altogether.
Anyway, that's where were at on Thursday afternoon. To get out of NICU and go home, she's got to get entirely off of the oxygen and begin drinking ~45mL of formula on her own, without the tube, every three hours. We're not there yet, and we're not sure when we will be. In the meantime, we're allowed to peek in on her whenever we want, and to hold her for half an hour at feeding times (ie, every three hours). Sarah was discharged from the hospital Friday, but stayed on in a kind of hotel room across the hall from NICU for an extra couple of days. We were hopeful that Ainsleigh and Sarah would come home, together, on Sunday or Monday. That didn't happen, of course, as I'll discuss in just a moment.
posted by Brian @ 2:20 PM
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