Ava-Marie's Homecoming

Ava got discharged from the NICU yesterday. St. Vincent's has an interesting set-up in their NICU. They have two family rooms that essentially amount to hotels rooms: a bed, a couch, a tv, and a bathroom. The night before you take your baby home, you spend the night with him/her doing everything yourself. A nurse comes in to check on you every few hours, but otherwise, you're on your own. So that's what we did Wednesday night. Ava was a good little sleeper, waking up not much longer than the amount of time it took her to eat, then going right back to sleep.

Thursday morning, she got her last dose of antibiotics, got all dressed up in a lavender gown and bonnet that her Oma made for her, and left the hospital about noon. Her bilirubin is still a little high, so back to the doctor today for her first follow-up appointment.

It's been pretty uneventful, thankfully. She's starting to wake up a little more surrounding her eating times, but still sleeping very well. She got her first video chat session in, talking to Oma and Pop last night, it was so stimulating, she slept right through it.

More pictures to come soon, and maybe a video or two once she starts doing something other than eating, sleeping, and pooping.

NICU Day 6

Ava's continuing to get better, she's up to drinking a little short of 2 ounces every 3 hours. She has stopped losing weight and should start gaining weight soon. This is about the goal amount of intake before a baby is able to go home from the NICU.

One of the other rules of the NICU is that she has to be moved from the warmer isolette to a regular crib, doing all her own work to keep herself warm. After two days in a regular crib, she's OK, from that standpoint, for discharge.

This morning's labs finally saw a significant drop in Ava's white blood cell count. Hopefully this continues and reaches normal in the next couple days.

All in all, she's shown a lot of improvement over the past couple days. There's still work to do, but it feels like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The goal has been home this coming weekend, here's hoping that comes true.

Ava-Marie's Birthday

A few pictures, I finally got around to uploading the good camera pictures to the computer.

Todd cutting the umbilical cord.

Proud Daddy

Proud Mommy

Ava-Marie's stats

Ava-Marie's a hefty little chunk!

Ava's still hanging out in the NICU. Continued prayers are always appreciated.

NICU Day 3 - Nothing ever comes easy

Also known as, when it rains it pours.

Ava-Marie's breathing continues to slowly get better. However in the midst of all that, Ava's white blood cell count has been rising. Initally 32k with a normal differential, it's now up to 43k with 55% bands. Essentially, signs are pointing to a bacterial infection. She's continued to be without fevers and everything else is looking better. However, in this setting in such a young infant, the doctor is obligated to do a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis.

Ava's already bought herself a good 7-10 days of antibiotics, signs of meningitis would push this up to 2-3 weeks. They did the procedure earlier today, and the nurse told us the fluid did not look cloudy or bloody. A good sign, though we're still waiting to hear back about the labs they sent. They also sent a culture but that will take a few days to come back.

All that being said, the doctor continued to say she looked good and he isn't worried about her progress. She handled to OG feeds yesterday very well, 10cc every 3 hours. Today they are advancing that to 15cc per feed for 3 times then up to 20cc if that goes well. She also got to take the formula via a bottle for the second 15cc feeding. And as a bonus, Krystal got to hold her for about an hour. Definitely some much needed love and affection passed between mom and baby.

Several times I've told my patients that have prolonged hospitalizations that not every day can be guaranteed to be a good day. That's certainly proving true for us.

Thanks for the continued prayers, we're ready for her to be home, but of course not until she's healthy and ready.

Ava-Marie makes her debut

Yesterday Krystal began having strong and more frequent contractions. They weren't too painful initially, but given that she was already 4cm dilated, she decided to go ahead and call the doctor. A short trip to the office to sit on the monitor quickly became a trip to Labor and Delivery. Unlike the two previous trips, there was no event that preceded the increasing contractions. She was just breaking through the medication at this point. Given that we had achieved 35 weeks, it was felt to be best to take the terbutaline pump off and see if Krystal's body would calm down on her own or proceed into labor.

It took several hours of contractions, but her cervix eventually changed from 4 to 5cm. Similar to last year, Krystal labored in her back, and the pain was approaching unbearable, so they proceeded with an epidural. Once the epidural was in place she was begun on oxytocin to augment the labor, and her water was broken. Things progressed fairly quickly from there. Within 3 hours Ava-Marie had arrived. It just took a little over an hour of pushing from Krystal.

We soon found out why. Despite being just 35 weeks and 2 days, Ava checked in at a solid 7 pounds 6 ounces and 20 inches long. Everything looked good, she was crying up a storm and pinking up quite well. Since she was only 35 weeks, they had the NICU nurse come over for the delivery. Due to her gestational age, Krystal having a fever at the time of delivery, and little Ava breathing 70-80 times per minute, they felt it best to take her over to the NICU at the very least for a 4 hour observation period.

At the end of the 4 hours, Ava's temperature had come down to the normal range and everything was looking good, but she was still breathing in the 70s per minute. Due to this and an elevated white blood cell count, she has ended up having to stay in the NICU. She's been getting IV antibiotics and IV dextrose as she's not able to feed yet breathing that fast. She has improved during the course of the day. At our last trip to the NICU, her last two counts had been in the 50s and 40s breaths per minute.

Temperatures and everything else are looking good. We're hopeful we may get to hold her either later tonight or tomorrow. Still not sure just how long she's going to stay, our primary pediatrician saw her in the NICU this morning and is anticipating 3 days to a week long stay.

Everything is looking good at this point. Prayers have carried us this far, and we thank you for continued prayers to bring her home with us soon. Pictures will follow within a couple days, just have to get home and be able to use a different computer.