The state of things

Details detail details... we just finished going through rounds with the medical team in the NICU so I'm going to update this while things are still pretty fresh in my mind. Lots of lingo here that I'm not going to bother explaining, hopefully it will be clear enough.

When Lily was born there was pretty heavy meconium staining in the amniotic fluid. While her APGAR scores were 8 and 8 she quickly showed signs of respiratory distress. From what I saw on the monitors on her own her O2 saturation counts were at 40 - 60 and her respiration was at around 150 - 160 breaths per minute. For reference what they like to see is 92 or higher on O2 saturation and around 40 breaths per minute. They started her on blow by oxygen (just holding an oxygen mask over her) and her o2 saturation counts came up quickly but her breathing was still really fast. They decided that she needed to make a trip to the NICU at that point.

Once in the NICU they started her on an IV and got her hooked up to a vapotherm. The vapotherm blows humidified air plus O2 in through some tubes they put up Lily's nose. They started her on pretty high levels of O2 but since yesterday afternoon they have been working on weaning her off of that and she has been doing pretty good at that. Because the Vapotherm blows air into her stomach it was necessary to put a tube down her throat to vent that out. They also took a blood draw for cultures and tests of her immune system to check for any sort of infections. Finally they set her up with a round of antibiotics just in case there was any infection we needed to be concerned about.

With the vapotherm on Lily wasn't able to eat, so while she was getting IV fluids her first food wasn't until late last night and apparently she threw up the first stuff they tried to feed her. She had a very grumpy night, most likely because she was so hungry. I have to admit I was a little pissed off when I came in this morning and found that she had screamed herself hoarse over the course of the night. I was able to give her a bottle, which she ate and kept down and then she passed out and slept peacefully. Later in the morning Melissa was able to give her a bottle as well and cuddle her close. Which I think was really good for both mom and baby. It's killing Melissa not to have Lily close to her right now.

As of this morning things are looking pretty good. Lily is bouncing back quickly. Her respiratory support is down to just humidified room air, so no additional O2 needed just some help with flow. Her numbers have been excellent since last night and it's likely she'll be off respiratory support entirely by EOD. No news on blood cultures as of yet but she isn't showing any outward signs of infection and the tests that we do have results for have all been good. There are a couple concerns outstanding at this point:

1. She is still receiving respiratory support and needs to be weaned completely off of that. Once off they are going to want to monitor her for at least 24 hours to ensure that she is doing well on her own.

2. She still hasn't demonstrated that she will eat consistently as of yet. Past two feeds have gone well but there needs to be more of a pattern established before they'll call that good.

3. Blood work to test for infections is still outstanding and we don't have even the preliminary results (at 24 hours) on that yet. Final results will be available 48 hours from the start of the culture, which would be tomorrow sometime.

All said I am optimistic that we will be getting our baby girl back soon. Saturday is looking like the most likely scenario, with the highly unlikely chance that she will be discharged by Friday. If Lily bucks the trend and things deteriorate then we could be looking at a long stay, but I'm confident that isn't going to happen.

Now you know about as much as I do. :)