Claire is one month!

Claire will be one month old this week on Thanksgiving! She has been doing very well these last few days since we had to re-intubate her on Saturday. We learned that when we put her right back on the ventilator her small sacks on the end of her lungs called alveoli reinflated and came right back up. This meant that what she needed was a little help with pressure support while she got used to breathing on her own. Today, Tuesday, we started her on a c-pap setting on her ventilator which makes her do about 95% of the work breathing and backs her up with some pressure support. We switched her ventilator settings around 10 am on Tuesday and are planning on taking her tube out around 8 am Wednesday as long as she continues to do well on her new ventilator setting. All her Lactaid levels and blood gas levels have been good all day long. They took her off of her TPN feedings because it was starting to affect her liver enzymes and turn her slightly jaundice after being on them for so long. If she tolerates her current breast milk feedings through her NG tube that we have been giving her for almost a week now and gets her ventilator tube out, we will increase her breast milk feedings. Claire got a new talking Santa from Grandma Dalrymple that reads her “The Night Before Christmas”, she stares at it and it seems to soothe her. She also had some more practice with a pacifier to regain her sucking motions. She is up for a few hours at a time and it is great to see her eyes again, since they have been turning down her sedation medicine called Versed. We will keep everyone posted how extubating on Weds morning goes. Just in case you all didn't believe me when I said that Chad changes more diapers than me, I included a picture as proof, enjoy!