Tuesday 6/19
Isabelle turned two months old today and she celebrated with another crib upgrade, it came with a music playing mobile! She might be a little young for the spinning animal part but she seems to like looking at them hang in the air. Overall Izzy is doing well and each day she is getting a little better at bottle feeding. We were warned it will be a slow learning process and that has proven to be true, sometimes she will drink half the bottle but most of the time she will only drink 5-10ml before getting too tired to continue. She was having a difficult day yesterday and didn’t feed at all by bottle. These days will happen so we are trying to stay positive, the trend has been mostly in the right direction and today she rebounded with a strong showing for Mommy.
Why did she have a bad day yesterday? Good question. Remember the google rule. Many babies born at 26 weeks have trouble coming off oxygen assistance because of the immaturity of their lungs. The intubation and CPAP they need to keep breathing does have some side effects, and can scar their little lung tissue. This will heal overtime as her lungs grow but in the short term it affects her ability to efficiently breath on her own. The medical term for all this is Chronic Lung Disease, don’t google it, it just means she has required oxygen longer than typical and sometimes breaths faster than the doctors would like. When her respiratory rate increases, she can’t safely eat by mouth, hence the day without bottle feeding.
After watching Isabelle’s oxygen requirement creep up for the past few days the Doctors decided to check her lungs with an X-ray. Sure enough there was a little extra fluid build up, so they put her on a three day treatment plan to reduce the fluid. She had her first dose of medicine this morning and we’ve already seen a big improvement with the respiratory rate and oxygen requirement. Hopefully she will keep improving over the next few days so we can all breath easy. (See what I did there?)
The rollercoaster ride continues. Tomorrow brings an eye exam and possibly a BMI scan in a rocket ship. That will be a cool video.
Meet Isabelle 