Day 38 - Day 2 of holding Ava

Ava had a great day and got a full night's sleep last night. The nurses were able to put her head facing straight up and her equilibrium didn't seem to bother her. She is at 35% O2 and is on 45 breaths per minute. They put her down to 45 from 50 and she is handling it fine. Her sugar is still acting up and they had to give her two more shots today. I got to hold her this evening for almost an hour and she fell asleep. She fell so asleep that they took her blood gas (which was 54), gave her a shot and she didn't even wake up. She is 810 grams which is around 1lb 13 oz. I love feeling her breath when she is on my chest. Both doctors came in while I was holding Ava, the one that had her the three weeks prior and the other doctor that has had her for the past two weeks. The current doctor was telling the prior doctor that the only reason they switched Ava to the ventillator was for me to hold her. But I have been told that she couldn't go much lower on the settings. The prior doctor was smiling and looked very happy. I joked with him that Ava was just giving him a hard time before. Our current doctor just said to keep our fingers crossed cause she can regress (he is always so negative). She is on her final stage of steroids where she will get four more shots. They also keep mentioning that the steroids worked good, but they could have worked better (whatever that means.) Her chest x-ray today seemed to have been a bit better than the prior day's x-ray.

We'll keep praying for Ava to keep getting better and better with no brain trauma whatsoever.