Week Seven

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Week Seven has been a week of ups and downs. Par for the course in the NICU, we are recognizing the “two steps forward one step back” experience.

The kids have been doing a great job of breathing on their own without the nasal cannula! Some days are better than others in terms of their oxygen saturation, but for the most part these numbers are looking more stable each day.

Both Christopher and Katharine have had some challenges with steady breathing, however, as they work on taking more of their food from a bottle. Some days are easier for them than others, and they are able to eat more. But sometimes they have some difficulty. As a result, the speech therapist was consulted this week to help examine their suck, swallow, breathe coordination. Both kids showed signs of needing help with breathing while eating, usually holding their breath for a while to suck and swallow, and then breathing very quickly to catch up. This reflex poses a risk for them to accidentally inhale any milk left in their mouth, so some intervention is needed until they are able to coordinate this more easily.

We learned that breast milk can be difficult for some preemies to handle because it flows so quickly that they don’t have time to manage the coordination of these tasks. So both kids were placed on “thickened feeds”, meaning simply that their milk is now mixed with a thickener that makes it flow more slowly from the bottle. Both are doing much better with this consistency, and get practice with the bottle at every other feeding, with time to rest in between practice sessions.

After drinking whatever amount they can from a bottle, they are receiving the remainder through their feeding tubes, so the kids are still growing like champions! They're both over six pounds now! Christopher is now close to 19 inches long, and Katharine is just over 17.5 inches. Some of their first preemie outfits are no longer working, and Mom thinks she’ll soon need to take up weight lifting to keep up with them! ☺

And the question of the month – when are they coming home? Well, we would love to say it would be in a couple more weeks! But we honestly don’t know. Based on their feeding progress, we may have several weeks to go. When pinned down to give us an estimate last weekend, their doctor gave us a very conservative “six to eight weeks”. We would of course love to have them home sooner, but we are very happy for them to have time to continue to grow until they are fully ready. So at this point, we are not ready to start a countdown. For now, we will just enjoy spending time with them while we wait!

Thank you, as always, for all your love and support!

With love,

Andrea, David, Christopher, and Katharine