Tonight's pics, in a separate post courtesy of iPad's reluctance to let me upload photos to Blogger that aren't on the web already...

All remains well with Little Poppet. Her latest consultant (they rotate every two weeks) is, apparently, THE guru when it comes to neonatal ventilation. So Lucy's been upgraded to the Mac-daddy of all ventilators - the very coolly named Drager Infinity C500. There's only one of these bad boys in the state, so Lucy's become quite popular as all the staff want to stop by and check it out. I suppose they want to know how it works just in case they've got a few hundred thousand bills laying around to buy one for themselves.

And in tonight's installment of Weight Watchers, we've crept up to 974 grams. Four figures appears imminent...

Just coming back from King Eddy and a Mumma-plus-Dadda visit for Lucy. She continues to track OK without being spectacular - Desat episodes are slowly becoming less frequent and her feeds are up to a juicy 6 mL/hour. Lucy also had her second go at breathing without the ventilator yesterday afternoon, performing fantastically well for the first 5 minutes before she tired and required an oxygen increase. Still, she managed 2 hours off the ventilator which is a small yet significant step in the weening process. Without wanting to jinx anything, we're also hopeful that by next weekend she'll crack the 1-kg club. Today she weighed in at 930 grams, so she's a lot closer to 4 figures than her birth weight of 690. Better put the champers on ice just in case!

Oscar, Robs and I have all been a bit under the weather of late, the three of us experiencing your garden variety cold. Unfortunately this means we can't get into the NICU to see Lucy. However, technology can be a wonderful thing! Using a webcam and a viewing room, we were able to go in and see Lucy from afar, which was especially cool as it was the closest Oscar's been to his little sister. (Remember - only Robs, myself and our respective parents can enter the unit.) Fingers crossed we'll be a bit better tomorrow so normal visits can resume.

Daddy got his second cuddle today, a wonderful way to end the week. I'll give the typing a rest today and let the pictures tell this one ...

A quick pre-weekend update: Lucy's had a good week. The hole in her heart, previously 2mm in diameter, appears to have closed and her infection markers are in the normal range. Her haemoglobin is at a hearty level following her last bloody transfusion 'top up' and her lungs are clear of the fluid that was apparent last week. Finally, she put on a whopping 60 grams to take her body weight to 810! We know that this doesn't mean we're out of the woods just yet, but it's certainly better to have periods which include more ups than downs.

 

Happy Valentines Day!

Lucy took her first breaths without the ventilator at 6pm last night, when the medical team trialled her on CPAP. She lasted four hours which was great, but she had to work damn hard for that time to maintain suitable oxygenation. Consequently, she was reintubated and back on the ventilator by 10pm.

The latest plan is to give her a week to fatten up some more before trying CPAP again. In the meantime, she's got to keep breathing through her nasal endotracheal tube (aka, 'the trunk') rather than the preferred oral one because she's between tube sizes. If they use the bigger tube, it will irritate her trachea. So they have to go with the smaller one, which is problematic as it offers an inadequate seal for Lucy when put through the mouth. Hence Little Poppet's little button nose remains hidden from view again in this episode. And that's Robs's wedding ring which would fit around Lucy's wrist rather nicely.

It was nice to bump into Stella's mum on the way out. Stella, Lucy's first roomie when we arrived in the NICU, has just graduated to the slightly-less-intense Special Care Nursery 2, and is reportedly doing fantastically well.  Hearing these little capsules of positive news from people who are traveling a familiar path helps keep the journey firmly in perspective, yet also reminds us that there is indeed light at the end of the proverbial.