Take A Deep Breath

Take a deep breath... I say this to Travis all the time. When he is worked up, upset or hurt, we always start by taking a deep breath. As I was standing by Vanessa's isolette a few days ago, her alarms started going off and I whispered to her: "Take a deep breath". I immediately thought, how profound. Something that I say all the time is literally what my sweet little Vanessa needs to do. Right now, the breathing is the one area that we are still struggling with. Although Vanessa is stable, she is still on the ventilator and she can't come home on a ventilator.  She isn't requiring more support on the ventilator, but she has these spells where her oxygen in her blood drops but she is able to recover. It's more frustating to me than to the doctors and nurses, because even though she isn't requiring more support, we haven't been able to ween her from the ventilator because of the spells.

The great thing is that everything else is progressing. She is currently only being nourished by milk. Almost all preemies start on a solution called TPN, which is "Total Parenteral Nutrition". The TPN is specific to each baby's needs based upon what they are lacking in their blood. This provides nutrition to the baby until they are able to be fully nourished by milk. It's crazy the medical advances, because today I was talking to a nurse and she was saying that before TPN, babies that couldn't handle feeds wouldn't survive. TPN was only created and used for preemies in the last 30 years, which makes me so grateful that my babies were born in this generation of technology. So, back to the reason for this medical lesson is that because Vanessa has done a great job digesting her food she does not need the nutrition from TPN. This means that her PICC line that was being used for the TPN has been removed, which lowers her risk for infection.

She is THE sweetest little girl. Today, even though she was having consistant spells of her blood oxygen dropping, I got to hold her. And by some miracle, and different from the last 3 times I've held her, she stabalized. Instead of continuing with the dips that she had been experiencing all day, she was perfect. I sat with her, heart to heart for almost 2 hours. It was one of the most precious moments of my life because I felt like her being with me was helping her.

Trust me, she was cozy the entire time. The nurse took off her blankies to show just how small Vanessa is. Of course, my styling daughter probably has more hats herself than all the NICU babies combined.

♥ Cassea