Cold Turkey

If you recall, I stated last week that usually somewhere between 32 and 34 weeks of age, they take the babies off of caffeine in the NICU.  Emma will be 33 weeks tomorrow, and today they took her off of it.  We weren't sure if they would wean her off of it or just take it away at once.  Well, they went with the cold turkey approach.  They are going to see how she tolerates it.  They are apparently pleased with the number of apnea and bradycardia episodes she's been having, otherwise they would not take have made this move.  We haven't been told of an episode in the last few days, so we're thinking she must be doing a pretty good job with those and not having many of them.

The next step, which they apparently considered trying today but decided against, is to reduce the pressure on her nasal cannula.  They contemplated doing it, but decided that they didn't want to make too many changes in one day.  This way they'll be able to better see which change was working.  If they changed both of those things and then she had a lot of A&B episodes or something else went wrong, they wouldn't be sure if it was the caffeine or the nasal cannula reduction causing it, so they're taking it one step at a time.  But if she tolerates the caffeine suspension, sometime in the next few days they will most likely also reduce her nasal cannula pressure.

Everything else remained the same today.  But we were also told that she is now up to 2 pounds, 3 ounces!  She's growing like a little weed!!  We were definitely excited about that as well.  She's now up to one kilogram, or 1,000 grams.  She was born at 708 grams, so in 3 weeks (today is her 3 week birthday, by the way) she's put on nearly 300 grams, or 10 ounces.  But after her first week, she was down approximately 3 ounces, so she's been pretty much right on track with her gaining 1 ounce a day goal they have for her since then.  Some days she will gain a couple ounces, some days she'll lose a few grams, but the trend is definitely in the right direction.

When I called this morning for her update, the nurse told me that she was doing great.  She told me that Emma was a feisty little thing.  Apparently Emma had been trying to take her feeding tube out, so the nurse was trying to tape it to her chin a little bit better.  Emma wasn't too fond of this, and kept swatting the nurse's hands away.  So when she was telling me this story, she said "I wonder where she gets her feisty nature from."  I of course have no idea, but my parents may be able to offer some insight into that one!!  Plus Emma's big sister also has the same trait.  Just more evidence of the battle for supremacy that we are going to face in the years to come.