Day 26

Today was the typical rollercoaster with the only good news being that she was up to 8.5ml of food today. As of tonight she is up to 9ml. They are going to increase her feeds to .5ml every 12 hours. Her full feed is 15ml, not the 12ml that I thought. That means it will be 6 days until that - next thursday.

Her O2 was up to 70 to 90% today. Her CO2 level was at 62, 65 most of the day until 6pm, it was at 82% CO2. That was really bad so they put her on her back, and she went down to 65%. They went up on her amplitude to 25.

The doctor spoke to us tonight about steroids again. He said he would like to put her on them now since she has not moved down on her settings for her lungs. He may do it tomorrow or soon after. They would like to get her at least until 30-35days but because she hasn't improved, he may have to do it sooner. He again warned of the risks like brain damage. But he said that if she had the steroids, her settings would go down in 24 hours. She could be off the oscillator by a week. If her blood pressure goes up (which is a side effect), than they would have to go down on the steroids and it may not work well. We are first praying that she can go down on her settings and if that doesn't work that the steroids work and she doesn't have brain damage and she her lungs have a complete transformation and she can be in room air (that would be an awesome miracle). We need her to be off the oscillator before it causes any damage and especially so she can go home.

The doctor also told me that the brain sonogram on Monday would just be a check to see if there is any immediate damage and that there still could be some major damage later that we would find out developmentally.

I did speak with the woman tonight who I spoke with a week or so ago, who was afraid of having the baby at 24 weeks. She did have her son and he is 1lb 7 oz. She also told me that our doctor told her to be as positive as I am being. I found that surprising since the doctor never says anything to me about how good it is for me to be positive. I did find that very encouraging.

Ava also opened her eyes more for me tonight and she held my finger. I can't wait for her to really see me.

Hoping for more miracles tomorrow... And longing to hold Ava.