Overall, this was a pretty good weekend for Emma. But she did have a couple episodes of the ol' A's and B's. She had 2 of them on Saturday and then another one this afternoon. But with all the changes they've made to her in the past week, they were completely expecting something like this to happen. In addition to all the changes they've made, she's still only 33 weeks and 4 days gestational age at this point. They expect babies to outgrow the A's and B's somewhere between 36 and 38 weeks. So she's still a good amount of time away from when they expect her to totally be over them.
She'd been 3 days since her last one so to have 3 over the weekend isn't bad at all. It's discouraging for us, but the nurses all explained to us that they've seen this thousands of times from other babies. Not only that, but each time she had one, she'd just finished eating and she was laying on her belly. Normally babies aren't allowed to lay on their bellies as it's considered a SIDS risk. But in the NICU when they're hooked up to all the monitors they can put them there because when something does happen, the alarms go off and alert the team that something's wrong. But once she comes home, she will not be laying on her belly! With all that said, we were told by more than one person that they feel it's a positional thing since they all occurred with her laying in the same position.
On the positive side of things, Emma is now up to 2 pounds and 6 ounces. She's getting beefier by the day! Not only that, but she's now up to 22ml of milk every 3 hours, up from 20 which she'd been on for the previous few days. She's still on what they call the low flow oxygen. When they put her on it, she was getting 50ml of oxygen. The next step down is 25ml. After that, the next step down is to remove it completely. After a day on 50ml, they tried her on 25. She tolerated it pretty well, but they do have to keep teeter tottering between the 50 and the 25. So she's obviously not quite ready to come completely off of it and be on 100% room air. But they are very encouraged that she's handled this low flow as well as she has.
So all in all, I'd say it was an average weekend for Emma. Again, while we are discouraged by the return of the A's and B's the nurses are not alarmed at all. She does continue putting on weight and tolerating more and more food whenever they give it to her. She's still exactly where they expect her to be at this point. It's a little bit tough for us because we thought that maybe she was getting over the A's and B's. Everyone there keeps reminding us not to get ahead of ourselves but when we have a few good days in a row it's natural to start thinking ahead. So while a few A's and B's isn't abnormal at this point, we got our hopes up. We know that she will improve and continually get better. There are many more good days ahead.
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