Abigail

This is my first attempt at a blog. I thought this might be easier to keep you updated. I am not sure how often I will be able to update it, but I will try my best, so here we go:


Thank you all for your prayers. Baby Abigail is doing great! We knew even before this precious little baby was born that we wanted her addition to our family to glorify and honor God. God is definitely faithful and good, and we would be saying that no matter what was going on right now - good or bad. But we are so grateful that we are able to say that and give thanks to God as Abigail is doing so much better!

Since we have been in Modesto:

The morning after we got her to Modesto the doctor was pretty concerned that she was still needing to be at 80% oxygen and said that if she was at that high of a level for much longer there could be permanent damage to her lungs. He said we needed to get her down to more like 40%. Along with that her respiratory rate was very high and her heart rate was accelerated. Her little chest was heaving up and down trying to get as much oxygen as she could. She was very agitated and she was on morphine to calm he down and help with the pain.

The doctor said that we needed to do the next step of treatment, which involved intubating - putting a tube down her throat and through her vocal cords into her lungs, and adding a surfactant (curosurf) to her lungs. That went very well and helped clear her lungs. After that she had a lot of inflammation and swelling of her vocal cords, and her breathing was very raspy, so they gave her another breathing treatment called Racepinepihrine Tx. It looked like a steamy mist that she breathed in. That helped a lot. We were able to be there during both of the procedures and see exactly what was going on. By the end of the day she was down to 60% oxygen which was a big improvement!!

Today Abigail got to "graduate" to the nasal cannula (little tubes going into her nose) instead of having the hood of oxygen - that is great progress! She is down to 35% oxygen, and she was very alert and active. Because she doesn't have to be under the hood she can be much more mobile; they actually let me hold her and breastfeed her - she latched right on and loved it! After that she was tuckered out and took a big nap. The 2nd and 3rd time I tried breast feeding her she didn't latch on very well and didn't seem too interested. She was very content and seemed to really like being held though. The nurse said she likely wasn't eating because she has a fully tummy with all of the nutrients that she is getting through the IV.

The doctor said that if everything keeps progressing well she will be able go home in another 3-6 days! (The prognosis when we first got her was another 10-14 days.) She just needs to be totally off of the oxygen and feeding well. We are thrilled and thanking God for all of these huge steps. Thank you for your continued prayer and support - it means so much to us. Love you all.