7-17-09

My goodness how fast this week has gone. Kaelyn continues to impress and surprise us. On Monday we celebrated her 1 month birthday. It's pretty crazy to look back four weeks and see how much she has changed. She looks more mature and bigger. Last night she weighed in at a life-best 1,160 grams (2 lbs 9 oz). In no time she'll be over three pounds and chunky as a Michelin man.

This week Kaelyn had 3 tests done. An echo cardiogram, an eye test, and a head ultrasound. The echo cardiogram results said that her ductus (pda) has gone from 'small to moderate' to 'moderate to large'. Just the opposite of what we wanted to happen. So, now they are worried that she may be getting too much blood to the lungs. Kind of weird considering that for the first couple of weeks of her life they were trying to keep the ductus open and now it won't close. The cardiologists are going to perform another one on Monday but are planning on sedating Kaelyn because she was just too feisty for them and they couldn't get the best images this last time. Then, they are going to take it to a weekly meeting and get other cardiologists input on how to best proceed. We'll keep you all posted.

The eye test went well. Basically they check to make sure that no eye complications arise due to her pre-maturity. Which is a real possibility. But, the results came back good and she shows no signs of the complications. Yay.

The head ultrasound went OK. She had one not too long ago and they noticed that one of the ventricles in the brain was slightly larger than normal. They told us that it was nothing to be too worried about but they are going to keep a close eye on it. Then they did another one just barely and not a whole lot has changed. We are really hoping that no major issues will arise.

After we found out about the echo results we were kinda bummed. But then, little miss Kaelyn came to the rescue. After talking to our NP we got looking and talking to Kaelyn and noticed that they had taken her feeding tube out of her mouth and had threaded it through her nose down to her stomach. Finally we got a good look at her face without a tube and big chunk of tape on her cheek. What a beauty! We couldn't believe how cute she is. Then, since she didn't have a tube in her mouth anymore, we gave her a full-size pacifier and she went to town on it. Apparently she loved it because she wouldn't stop sucking, except to catch her breath, and the she was right back up. I know it sounds kinda funny, but that made us so happy that the echo results didn't get us too down. Part of the reason why sucking a full-sized pacifier made us so happy is because it gets her started on the path to being able to eat through a bottle. The sooner she gets her bottle feeding down the sooner we can check that goal off for her to come home. The other goals are: maintaining her own body heat, no major drops in oxygen saturation or heart rate, and getting her heart situation figured out and under control.

Now, I'll let Jeana add her touch with pics and descriptions (she's done all the others so give the credit to her, I just do the writing).

Check out that action!

Her being feisty after we put her back in her isolate.

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

Check out those chubby cheeks.


Finally I can fit my whole hand in my mouth, life is good:)