Week 10

Hello, and welcome back!  We hope you had a great Independence Day!

Alexandra started the week off well; she was able to come down on her CPAP pressure by 1 setting.  Remember that her CPAP pressure is what keeps her airways and lungs from deflating between breaths.  She did so well the first part of the week, that on Wednesday we had an interesting choice to make.  Did we want to come down another notch on the pressure, or did we want to try another form of CPAP?  The other form is more comfortable, but it is not as effective.  The comfort is important because she CONSTANTLY pulls and punches at her mask.  Her mittens offer little defense for the plastic foe on her face.  When she isn't trying to physically attack it, we often see her staring it down like she's a gunfighter in the old west.  Anyway, we opted to try for the more comfortable type, but it only lasted until Saturday.  She was pretty uncomfortable on Saturday because she had a lot of waste gasses (carbon dioxide) in her blood.  So we changed her back to the less comfortable version (with the mask that you saw a picture of last week).  By today she was feeling a lot better (she told me so with her eyes).  We don't look at the lack of success as a failure, but rather, we look at it as a 3-day break from the mask.

The plan for now is see if caffeine will help stimulate some of the muscles that drive her breathing.  No, we are not giving her espresso, there is a prescription version of caffeine that the hospitals use in babies.  For the record I offered to bring her an espresso, but that idea was quickly and unceremoniously dismissed by her team.  At the same time we are giving her the caffeine, she continues to grow bigger and stronger, which also means she is gaining crucial lung volume.  The more volume, the more air in her lungs, and the more efficient she can breathe.  The more efficient she can breathe, the sooner she leave the hospital for the first time.

Oh yeah, how big is she???  She's now between 8 1/2 and 9 pounds.  Not bad for being a little over 3 1/2 pounds just 10 weeks ago today!!!

Happy 10'th week, Alexandra!