6 week recap

Cameron will be 6 weeks old tomorrow. It is so hard to believe she's that old and that much closer to coming home. We could potentially be halfway. I thought I would take a look back at all the big milestones she has met.

Lungs/breathing:

She was not breathing at birth and put on the ventilator. After only 48 hours and a dose of surfactant she was taken off the ventilator and put on the CPAP. About a week later she was tried on the nasal cannula and didn't do well. That bought her the BiPap. She was taken off the BiPap last week and put back on the CPAP. Tuesday she was taken off the CPAP and is doing so well on the nasal cannula!! She is now on room air most of the time. Cannula is the last stop so it will be a big milestone when she finishes with it. Overall, this area gets most improved. Her issues have really cleared up, no more scary episodes.

Feeding:

For the first 4 days she was only getting IV nutrition. The fact that she would need long term IV nutrition got her the PICC line. On her 5th day she was started on VERY tiny amounts of breast milk through a tube feed. They increased her feeds every 2-3 days until she was taking enough by mouth that they could stop the IV nutrition. She had her PICC line taken out about a week ago!! She is doing really well on full feeds. Still on the feeding tube, our next goal is to go to bolus feeds. This is where she no longer gets a continuous drip but large amounts at one time as if she was bottle feeding. They will start that maybe in about a week and once she proves she can tolerate it she will start on the bottle, hopefully at 34 weeks corrected.

Weight:

Her weight gain has been fairly slow but we're definitely getting somewhere. Born at 2 lb 2 oz, she dropped down to 1 lb 11 oz on her 4th day of life. She got back up to 2 lbs on October 1st. It took her a while to get to two and half pounds, she hit 2 lb 8 oz on October 26th. Today, she is up to about 2 lb 13 oz! Getting dangerously close to three pounds :D

PDA:

Our biggest issue. The lasix is helping to control the fluid retention. A recent echocardiogram shows the PDA is smaller than it used to be.

Miscallaneous:
She has not run into any infection issues which is amazing.

Also, she avoided a blood transfusion. A course of epogen was enough for her to produce enough of her own red blood cells.

She is now able to kangaroo with us once, maybe twice, per day. When she started it was once every other day.

She only had one stint on the bilirubin lights. I was expecting her to be on them multiple times throughout her NICU stay but she is doing just fine without them.

Her head ultrasounds have all looked good, no problems there which is a relief.

I think that's about it. The day to day progress can feel so slow sometimes, but when you look at how far we've come, how many milestones we've passed, and how many issues have cleared up it's truly amazing. She has exceeded so many expectations and I'm so proud!