February 26th, 2010

Kierson is at 35 weeks now and continues to show steady improvement despite small ups and downs dealing with her oxygen requirement. She is now down to 5 L/min of oxygen with an FiO2 of just under 50%. She has been at this setting for awhile now as she is no longer on steroids that help simmer down inflammation in her lungs. We are grateful that her oxygen requirement has not increased past this.
She had her second eye exam today which showed no change in the retinopathy (which is good). She will continue to get these exams every 2 weeks. We made a sign to help Kierson's nurses and respiratory techs to remember to keep her oxygen settings as low as she will tolerate so that her retinopathy isn't made worse (due to unnecessarily high O2 settings).
Kierson continues to have heart rate drops and oxygen saturation drops as well. This is most likely due to her prematurity. Doesn't seem to be anything we can do about this other than hope her nurses aren't pre-occupied with one of Kierson's neighboring babies and is able to respond soon enough to prevent anything bad from happening.
Kierson is now feeding from a bottle as well as by tube feeds. She does great, however, yesterday she had about a 10 mL spit up without signs of aspiration. She did well today according to the latest report. Kierson is now up to about 3 1/2 pounds.
Overall, she is doing well and remains stable. Her doctors and nurses continue to prepare us for a little one that is going to be oxygen dependent for some unspecified amount of time when she comes home. We just hope that she continues to improve and is only on minimal amount of oxygen supplementation. We also hope for no tracheostomy.
We greatly appreciate your continued prayers for our little miracle baby. Her older sister is doing great and we are so grateful that she has not gotten sick yet. If momma gets sick, she can't see and hold Kierson.