Making progress

Yesterday and the night before last were a little hectic. The girls are still doing really well. Keller's initial blood work (CBC) came back negative for infection, we are still waiting on a 48 hour blood culture but it looks like she is ok. Hollister had a blood gas screen come back high for CO2, this means she wasn't exhaling completely and her lungs were holding on to it. What prompted all the tests on Keller was a series of apnea events night before last. After the docs treated Keller for any potential infection they decided to do a chest x-ray on both K and H. Both girls had partially collapsed lungs. This may explain Keller's apnea events and Hollister's high CO2. Both girls were placed back on cpap to reinflate their lungs and give them some help with inhaing and exhaling. The doctor anticipates them not being on it much longer than a week. Already the girls have responded. Their chest x-rays yesterday afternoon showed significant improvement and K has stopped all her apena episodes. H never really presented with any issues other than the CO2 being high and she continues to do just fine. This morning the NICU reports that things are still going well for both girls. Quinn has been totally fine thru all this expect for her billyruben levels. The doctors felt that all 3 girls Jaundice was something called breast milk Jaundice. They aren't sure why, but some women's breast milk causes it. The difference between that and regular Jaundice is that the babies blood levels eventually plateau with breast milk Jaundice as opposed to regular Jaudice where they'd continue to rise. They also don't do anything to treat breast milk Jaundice except keep an eye on blood levels. Quinn's levels didn't exactly plateau like her sisters so, they took her off breast milk for 24 hours to properly diagnose her jaundice (replace the milk with formula and if it is breast milk jaundice, the numbers will go down). Sure enough her levels went down. She is now back on breast milk and they will be keeping an eye on things. All 3 girls continue to gain weight and get bigger. Quinn is our biggest and yesterday when Jer and I went to see them, she looked more babyish rather than preemieish (not a word I know). She has filled out some and was wide awake making really good eye contact and facial expressions. With Keller and Hollister being on cpap we couldn't really see their faces. We did notice that the head gear for the cpap was size medium rather than the extra small they started with when they were born. They are all growing so well :).