Getting Stronger And More Alert

Well, there was not much going on today for Kayley. There were no changes to her CPAP settings. Her feedings stayed at 25 cc's since that is still her full feed. She's still in the same room...113. Megan held her this afternoon and I held her this evening. She has just been doing great.

To me, she has seemed more alert. When you talk to her, she opens her eyes. She seems to be awake more often. When we're in changing her diaper or turning her, she seems to always have her eyes open and looking around. Her hands are trying to grab anything in the vicinity. Normally, that's either a finger or her CPAP mask. She is also sucking more and more. Every now and then, her fingers will find her mouth. She sucks away on them. She even likes the pacifier quite a bit. Hopefully, these last couple things help prevent any feeding issues in the future. When Kayley was sucking on her fingers tonight, I asked the nurse when they will try to feed her normally (not through the tube). She said that babies normally get the coordination to breathe, suck, swallow around 32 weeks. If they were to try it now, she'd be really clumsy at it. She'd either forget to breathe or not know what to do with the milk that was in her mouth. So the tube it is at least for another couple weeks.

Kayley seems to be getting a lot stronger with her breathing. Earlier in the week, I mentioned that she was pretty reliant on the CPAP. Once the nurses took it off to adjust it or to do anything else, her blood oxygen levels would start decreasing right away. Tonight after I got done holding her, the nurse took off the CPAP to adjust the mask. It turns out that Kayley had a red mark from where the mask was so it took a little longer than normal to put the mask back on. All the while, Kayley was doing great. With no assistance except a little oxygen blowing near her face, Kayley held and even increased her blood oxygen levels during the 15 or 20 minutes the CPAP was off. What a difference a couple days make. At first I didn't believe Kayley would be off the CPAP in "several days", but now it seems very believable.

The last update is that Kayley seems to be gaining a decent amount of weight. She weighed 1460 grams (3 lbs 3 oz) tonight. That's 50 grams up from last night. At this rate, we'll have a little chunker on our hands.

**We didn't take any pictures today so I through in one from the first couple days. It's unbelievable but I can see a lot of difference already.