7lbs 14 ounces!!!

Here is a sneek peek of Danielle's room, almost finished! :)

Danielle had a great week and weekend! She is now up to 7 pounds 14 ounces, she will be 8 pounds this week!

Danielle is still taking the bottle wonderfully. The past 24 hours she has been a bit sleepy but yesterday she took 21% of her feedings by bottle, this is great news! She is now getting a bottle 'as tolerated, meaning as she is awake.'

This week Danielle had another eye exam. Her eyes showed to have gotten a bit progressively worse, but not by much, thank goodness! For this reason her oxygen settings were not able to be lowered this week. The University is of course a 'teaching' hospital, therefore does much MORE research on almost everything than pretty much any other hospital around. For this reason, Danielle is in a GREAT place right now because the decisions that they are making on a daily basis on her care and if there are any changes or not, is really helping out Danielle much more than most people even understand. Basically Dr. Klein (the medical director, who Dylan also had as a doctor) has done all kinds of clinical research and has set clinical guidelines based on what he has found that is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Opthamology as far as oxygen settings for preemie babies and especially preemies with ROP. A preemies eyes peak between 36-40 weeks gestation usually. So until she gets to 40 weeks gestation (which is after next week) and if her eyes are still changing before she is at 40 weeks gestation, they will not change her oxygen settings. There is a formula they use that concentrates on saturation targeting, this is figured by the flow she is getting, the % of oxygen her eyes are getting and the % of oxygen her lungs are getting to determine the effective FIO2 that will help her eyes and not be harmful to her lungs. The Effective FIO2 for her is greater than 50% to keep her sats 97% and greater, because she is on blended air oxygen with the oxygen setting at 80% she is actually getting approx 49-50% oxygen which is needed for her eyes and still a good amount that is needed to help her lungs and not to, not prevent them from getting stronger.
So she has pre-threshold ROP which is Stage 2. When each zone in her eyes is matured that is when it is less likely that the ROP will worsen. Right now she is showing ROP and her Zone 3 (peripheral vision) has not matured, her blood vessels are larger, they want them to fully populate the back of the eye which will mean they are fully developed, if I understand her staff doctor correctly. So basically she still needs to get a little older before her eyes will mature, meaning no changes right now. Is this keeping Danielle in the hospital, yes.....is this a concerning factor......yes, and no. Yes because of course we want her home because she is doing so good, and no because she is getting the best care possible right now for her eyes. So she will get another eye exam this week and we will go from there.

Also late last week one of the nurses who never had Danielle before, noticed that her shunt was a little puffy on the bottom portion. I didn't think it was and neither did Brad or the Staff doctor. But I asked my aunt, who works at the university and thankfully, checks on Danielle every day for us, and she said she thought it may look a little bit puffy but only in 1 area. So after hearing her thoughts, Brad and I discussed and decided to have Neurosurgery come and check it out, since she is still there and all they have to do is come take a look we figured, why not? So they came down and we are still not sure why, but they ordered all kinds of tests on Friday night. I got this unnerving phone call as I was in the middle of painting her room at 9 at night and Brad was on his way to the hospital. Thankfully he walked in just as I was talking to the nurse. So they did a shunt series, which is a series of 4 x-rays to look at the shunt, and they ordered a CT Scan to check the fluid. Thankfully Brad was there with her for the CT scan. I was freaking out, but this was ALL JUST precautionary. So the shunt series was normal and so was the CT, thank you lord! But they still decided they wanted to do a test where they inject dye into the shunt and put a special light under Danielle and watch the fluid travel down into her tummy where it should, this was a bit unnerving also. So this was scheduled for Saturday morning, I got up there early because I wanted to be there with her. Well Neurosurgery came in early that morning and decided that the test was unnecessary because everything had looked normal the night before. This was great news!! So now they are just going to periodically check on Danielle to make sure they area isn't puffy, which it 'wasn't' and is not currently.

So Danielle had a pretty tiring start to her weekend, but we are so thankful that everything is going just fine and that she is growing and doing so well, thank you lord!~