Ava - September 28th

Josh and I got a good nights sleep last night and woke up feeling much better today....sleep was definitely needed!  We went to see Ava first thing this morning and the nurses reported that she had a good night and that they had decreased her oxygen to 35%!

talkin' with daddy...

 Sweet baby girl is loving her hands....

 It's hard to tell how small she is in these pictures, but the diaper she's wearing (that looks extra large) is a premie diaper!

A picture of the monitor showing a good heart rate, respiratory rate, and O2!  It's exciting to go in for a visit without alarms going off...she definitely making progress!

 I've been pumping and they decided that she was ready for her first feed today.  She's still not able to breast feed or bottle feed because she needs to save all her energy for breathing...so we fed her through the tube in her mouth that goes all the to her tummy.  It's only a little bit, but she tolerated 3 feeds well.  The first one was 3 cc, the second was 7 cc, and the last was only 2 cc.  They said we could feed her up to 9 cc every three hours, but I haven't been able to pump that much yet.  Hopefully my supply will increase and we can start feeding her more.  For now, they are still feeding her through one of her umbilical lines, but if she continues to tolerate her feeds they'll be able to remove one of her umbilical lines!

One of the NICU nurses called us around 5:00 to tell us that Ava was wide awake...so of course we jumped at the opportunity to see our baby girl awake!  We practically ran to the NICU!  It was so sweet...she just laid there staring at us as we talked to her and loved on her.  It was definitely the next best thing to actually getting to hold her!

She was trying really hard to suck on her hands so the nurse told us we could try a paci.  She absolutely loved it!!!  It was difficult for her to keep it in because of the tube in her mouth, her tongue thrust, and the fact that she kept pulling it out....but with a little help she kept it in and loved every minute of it! Looks like we have a paci girl on our hands...

Once again they gradually decreased her oxygen today.  She moved from 35% to 28% and down to 25% at our last visit around 11pm tonight.  The goal is to be at 21% (which is what everyone breaths at) by morning and then they'll start decreasing the flow.

Ava also had her first bowel movement today!  (I never thought I would be so excited about poop...Ha)  

All in all it was a good day....decreased O2, 3 successful feeds, 1 poop, improved respiration rate, and a successful paci trial!!!