Day 30

We love the staff at the St. Luke's NICU.  We found out that a few of the nurses that we've seen a lot asked to be champions for our girls, so that they will always be in our room whenever they are on shift.  There are a lot of people pulling for these girls, and we will always be grateful to have so many dedicated people caring for them.

Avery had a great day today.  When we went in to see her, she had a huge poopy diaper.  I know you're dying to know just how much poop, let me just tell you it was a solid good load.  She was also more awake and alert than we have yet seen her.  She just had eyes for her mom and wanted to see her so badly.  Later in the day, she was moved off of the jet ventilator (finally) and onto the conventional one, which is really quiet and lets them get used to the feeling of taking their own breaths again.  Avery loved not having the constant sound of the jet, and was doing so well that they are going to try to take her off the ventilator altogether some time tomorrow.

Wren had a little bit of an issue last night, where at 3 in the morning, her breathing tube accidentally came out of her left lung and popped over and into the right lung stem for a short bit.  The nurses saw it quickly when she had a sudden desaturation.  Her tube was pulled back into the midline position for now, which is just back in the throat where it can again inflate both lungs.  We were worried, because they wanted to wait until late today or even tomorrow to pull the tube back, but for all we know, it could also have been bad to leave the tube in the good lung for too long.  For now, she is actually doing pretty well.  She will be watched closely to make sure the blebs aren't filling back up with air again.  In a chest x-ray she got in the afternoon, the staff were celebrating because her blebs hadn't filled back up with air, and they could even see some more healthy tissue around the site of the damage.  If the problem returns, there is a chance that they could attempt to get the tube back in the healthy lung again, but first we will watch this and see what happens for the next few days.