Daily Dose: Friday, April 10

Today Hope had a tiring day. She has done well with her nasal cannula so the nurse practioner weaned her back to .5 litres of flow today. This is the farthest she will be weaned other than to put her on room air, so this is exciting!

Hope has developed an abscess on her left hand where her last IV was placed. It looked like a pimple last weekend but the doctors cultured it yesterday and found it is a staph infection. Today the doctors were worried it might pass into the bones in her hand so they have started her on 7 days of antibiotics. These should solve the problems with her infection, but could complicate her feeds since they kill off the "good" bacteria in her stomach. We hope that Hope will be able to take her feeds through the antibiotics.

Today Hope had some "stool issues" so the doctors did not up her feeds in case there was difficulty with the increased volume.

Hope was pretty touchy today. She had numerous episodes where her heart rate and blood oxygen dropped to an alarming level. Today, Hope preferred to be left alone to sleep. Can't blame a girl from getting tired, life is rough!! Hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow for the Easter festivities!!!

Daily Dose: Wednesday, April 8

Hope had an AMAZING day today!!! She has been officially weaned off the vapotherm, so she is now on just 1 liter of flow on the nasal cannula. She is doing GREAT with it!! Her feedings were also increased today from 18mls every 3 hours to 25mls every 3 hours. And she is tolerating that well so far!! Since Hope is on the nasal cannula, they decided to let her try the "non-nutritive" feedings again, but... since the doctors think Hope was a little overzealous and was being more successful than was expected, they allowed them to be "semi-nutritive".

Hope has a lot going on in her crib today. We have a new ensemble for the Hope Collection. Hope is modeling an outfit given to her by Grandma & Grandpa H, it is very comfy and cute. Hope also has some things to look at in her crib. First, she has a string over her crib where we can hang toys for her to play with. You can't see the string but you can see the tip of a ring of keys hanging there. Next, Hope has some beautiful black and white (and red and blue) pictures in her bed that her friends Pat & John Durham gave to her. Hope LOVES looking at the pretty pictures. She looks forward to using the pretty crib bumper that came with the photos but apparently there are some NICU rules preventing the bumper from being in her crib.

Hope is VERY thankful for all these gifts, especially since yesterday was her 4 month birthday!!!!