Staying The Course - Recovery Day Six (2/7)

Sloan's day was mostly uneventful.  After her last two big days, we are happy to just see her maintaining.  She spent most of the day on a regular oxygen tube but around 3pm her lab results started coming back showing that her lungs were having a hard time pushing the oxygen back out.  So the doctors decided to put her on a CPAP which will push more oxygen into her and help push fluid out of her lungs by making her take deeper breaths.  Since she was put on that, her oxygen levels have gotten better and while the head gear she has to wear to keep it on isn't all that flattering, she seems to tolerate it well.  They've also started to ween her off some of her meds. She has gone from a high of thirteen pumps at one point to six pumps as of today.

After eleven days of life, Sloan was able to eat for the first time!  They placed a feeding tube through her nose and gave her very small doses of breast milk through a drip over a three hour period.  They will continue to slowly give her more starting tomorrow and gradually increase as she shows she is able to handle it.  She did great with her dosage today and it made me feel better knowing she's getting some nutrition.

We also had more visitors today!  Jen & Jeremiah stopped by to meet Sloan and spent a few hours with us catching up.  I was excited that they came on a good day and could see Sloan without her breathing tube and with her chest closed.  She also woke up a few times and was looking around so they were able to see her alert.

Tomorrow the nurse told us that she will be taking off the dressing from Sloan's chest closure.  They also plan to continue to try and ween her from the c-pap in the hopes that she can go back to the regular oxygen tube soon.  We're hopeful she won't have to be on the CPAP too long since, as you can tell, it presses against her poor swollen face and can create sore spots.  They change the small mask and placement of the head gear often to avoid these sores, but we can already see where it's creating some pressure points.  

Happy to have another day where we didn't hit any major roadblocks.  Kyle and I keep saying that we are so happy with how she has been doing, but keep a little bit of a guard up knowing that this journey is quite unpredictable with these little ones and things can change at any time.  But for now, we'll take what she's giving us!