Eleanor's Story

Happy Birthday to Mommy! (And thank you to Alex for persuading Kim to go out to dinner on Wednesday...it was so nice to have everyone together for a night out.) Eleanor has been doing great and has had NO heart rate drops. The doctors are slowly weaning her pressure settings to eventually take her off of vent support. This is not happening anytime soon, but it's the goal in mind. She is weighing in at a whopping five pounds six ounces! Best news yet, Eleanor was moved to the B team which is the next level down from the super sick babies in the A team! HOORAY!!! In addition, yesterday Eleanor got to move to the stable hallway of the NICU so that her old room was available for the sicker babies (Eleanor is still a sick baby but not nearly as bad as the new babies that come through).  The new hallway is much quieter with considerably less beeping going on. Eleanor tolerated the move around the hallway quite well and kept her oxygen at 25%. Mommy and daddy are SO PROUD of t

Eleanor is two months old now and doing well.  The doctors plan to gradually wean her vent settings until they can try out some new head gear (get rid of the elephant mask again...the RAM was too much work and she experienced increased heart drops and oxygen). She stays pretty stable now at under 30% oxygen and has had vastly fewer heart drops. She mostly just stops breathing when she is super comfy and super asleep. She weighs very very very close to FIVE pounds. Kim said, "If you would have told me on January 22nd that roughly two months after birth, she’d be this huge, I would have laughed in your face." She is filling out quite nicely, if I do say so myself :) What a cutie  Eleanor passed her thyroid test with flying colors. She has her third eye exam tomorrow (hoping for equally good results: no ROP, great growing eyeballs). Mom went back to work Wednesday. She was supposed to return Tuesday, but she had to call off because she had the flu...uhm, thanks, Nat

An update from Mom: Eleanor has been much the same and yet totally different.  Little miss is now FOUR POUNDS FOUR OUNCES! That’s huge! She still hasn’t mastered the whole “humans have to breathe to stay alive” thing, but she’s trying.  She also has a beautiful RAM Cannula helping her breathe instead of the awful CPAP mask. This has made her face and hair visible and she is so much happier! It’s a lot harder for her to breathe with this, so all of her backup settings have increased, but that’s alright!  Today, she puked for the first time in her entire almost 8 weeks on this earth. She was not at all phased and didn’t really give two shits! We assume it was induced by her pacifier. And speaking of shits! She pooped and puked simultaneously, and we think she felt the epitome of relief. It was slightly hilarious.  Afterwards, she was quite awake, and Mom and Dad had a good ol' time entertaining her and trying to get her to fall back asleep. We failed real hard, but i

I know the title isn't really the point, but guys, it's HARD to come up with them. Here are some updates from Kim: Eleanor has been having much better days since last week. The medical team adjusted her backup settings on her NAVA (the machine that breathes for her when she decides she doesn’t want to anymore) after Mom repeatedly stated that she always drops her heart rate when she is in backup (this is...not supposed to be a thing). She also required a little more pressure to keep her lungs open and slightly higher oxygen support. She is gaining weight like mad, and today tipped the scales at a whopping 3 lbs. 12 oz.! She even gets to have more food now, which is exciting.  Eleanor had her second eye exam today. Blood vessels look good, but she’s still too underdeveloped to tell if she will have any issues. The doctors check for ROP (eye disease), not her actual vision ("Better One, or Two?"). Babies this small don’t actually see how we see, only outlines

After several uneventful days on her new elephant mask, Eleanor has continued having drops in her heart rate, which are now lasting longer and much more frequent and significant. She has also required slightly higher oxygen. This persuaded doctors yesterday to take a blood gas (check her CO2 levels), CVC (check her white count and hemoglobin), blood cultures (check for infection), and urine culture (further check for infection).  They started her on an antibiotic just to be on the safe side. Her hemoglobin came back low and her white count was high (suggesting that she's fighting an infection). They gave her a blood transfusion and hooked her up with fluids after taking her off food for the day (NPO). Her cultures have since been negative and the white count in her urine was also acceptable. She even had a good blood gas.  This brings us to today. She has had vastly more significant drops in her heart rate and prompted a code blue around 5pm. The medical team has since increas