Photo by Lucas Davies on Unsplash

More Bottles

First things first: Aspen is rocking the bottle! She’s taken her entire feed (52 ml) from the bottle from Sam our last two feeds. That’s amazing!

For Elizabeth, she continues to have bloody stools. They just won’t go away. We still haven’t stopped feeding her neocate, but it really needs to stop. However, we have started giving her a bottle with just a little formula in it with a very stiff nipple. We’re mostly working on the motions with her and she didn’t seem to like taking the binkie trainer.

Not That Interested

Events

The girls have both reduced their frequency of needing help with any of their O₂ desaturations and bradycardias. They still have them, but they mostly are able to recover on their own, which is what we need their nervous systems to be able to do.

However, yesterday (Sunday), between our visits, Elizabeth had a pretty bad event. Apparently her O₂ levels dropped into the 40% range and she wasn’t climbing back up even with stimulation from the nurse. The nurse ended up having to grab some oxygen and do what they call “blow-by” to get her levels back up. That’s the first time that I’m aware of that they’ve had to do that. Aspen was threatened with it during her IV event (Left Out) but didn’t actually need it. Just another reminder of why they need to be there and not at home.

Checklists

Our day nurse yesterday walked us through some of what the girls need to do before we can take them home.

1. Feed on their own
   1. Take ≥80% of their daily feeds by nipple
   2. Ad-lib¹ their feeds
2. Go at least five days with no events
   1. Can have “self” events, just nothing with external stimulation

Aspen is well on her way. Saturday she took 57% of her feeds by nipple, which is great progress towards that 80% number. If she keeps this up, she could be out pretty quick. We do need to get her up to a “bigger” and “looser” nipple, but I’m not concerned about that.

Elizabeth still has some work to do. Her bottle feedings just aren’t as good as Aspen’s and the bloody stools are troublesome. They’ll likely try other formulas with her to try to get rid of those. Again, there’s no infection, so it’s not “scary,” just something that has to be managed and can take some time.

Pictures