Sunday, February 17, 2008

her time will come

Eliot was on the high flow canula with a setting of 2 before she got her infection. At that point, she was doing better than Owen. That was exactly one month ago, and she has not been the same since. On multiple occasions, the doctors have tried to wean her down from a high setting of 3.5, but she has always had a few severe drops in oxygen, and would inevitably be bumped back up on her flow within a few hours. The only way for her to progress to bottle feedings is to get her off the high flow and onto a regular nasal canula like her brother. The doctors kept telling us to have patience, that her time would come.

Last night, after two stable days, they decided to try again. Mike and I sat for three hours, and watched as Elie remained at this lower setting. Could it be? We called at midnight - still stable. We called at 3am - still good. We called at 6am - Elie was still at 2.5 and holding steady. Amazing. She might just be on her way to the big, bad bottle - finally.

Owen continues to do well, though his reflux is a little worse than his sister's. They have increased his bottles to four a day, but he has yet to complete all four due to spitting up or choking from reflux. We are hoping he will accomplish this in the next few days, as this is the only way to increase him to five. There is still talk of taking him off oxygen support in the next couple of days. What a step in the direction of home this would be!

One nurse said to me last week, "It must be so frustrating. Your twins are now 35 weeks. They should be so close to coming home, and now they are having to deal with bad cases of acid reflux."

"Are you kidding?" I replied. "We'll take a little indigestion over what we've been through in the last two months!"

We can deal with this. We are happy to deal with this - believe me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mom:

Did you see all that gray hair we're giving Grandpa? I think it comes from watching our monitors, don't you? He acts like he wasn't really worried about us, or you and dad, but we can see a little twinkle in his eye as each milestone passes. We think Grandpa needs a little hug, so until we're big enough ...

Love, Elie and GI "O"