Feeds!

Cailin is now 4 weeks old (29 weeks "gestational age" as of tomorrow), and we're thrilled to report that she has continued to do well since her last excruciating low on Friday the 5th. Her ventilator settings have been slowly creeping down--perhaps a bit slower than Dad would find ideal, but progress is good no matter how slow.

And the best news is that she's been stable enough that they gave her approval to be fed yesterday! They feed her through a tube to her stomach, and they're only feeding 1 cc at a time--just enough to "prime" her digestive system. They started at 1 cc every six hours, but the nurse just let us know that they're already moving to 1 every three hours! Before they had to stop her feedings several weeks ago, she was getting 2 cc's every 3 hours, and if all goes well she'll be back to that level soon.

And that's not all the good news; the doctor that takes over next week (they rotate the lead /attending doctor at the NICU every two weeks) is our friend that initially got Lauren into see the high risk pregnancy doctors at Jefferson. It so happens that he's a big believer in kangaroo care, so we're both very hopeful that Cailin will remain stable, and if so, we should be holding her very soon! We both can't wait--I think I'm actually more excited for Lauren to hold her than I am to hold her myself. They already have such an amazing bond, which of course isn't surprising. Cailin lights up in her little isolette the second she hears Lauren's voice. I'm quite certain she'll be ecstatic to be held by her mommy!


And we got even more good news this week; they've been monitoring a hormone level in Lauren's blood which relates to her pregnancy complication. It needs to return to normal in the next several months, and it was down by 50% again this week. We met with one of Lauren's doctors yesterday, and he was thrilled at her progress, and also gave her the all-clear to resume normal activity, which means she'll probably start biking down to see Caili each day.

There was a little bad news this week--Cailin's central line came out, and on Thursday she had her second surgery to put it back in. Fortunately the surgery went well, and hopefully this time the line is in to stay until they want it out. But given the previous week, this was minor. If every week could go this smoothly, we'd be thrilled!

We hope you are all well. Thank you all for your continued prayers and words of encouragement. We can't tell you how much we appreciate all of you.