4 weeks old

Wow, the girls are already 4 weeks old! They will be 1 month old on Dec 14 (wednesday). Here's how their week went:

Alivia had a roller coaster of a week with her cpap. The doctors put her on oxygen prongs at the beginning of the week but she was back on cpap less than 24 hours later. A couple days went by and they decided to try it out again. I was not very happy. That was their 4th attempt in less than 2 weeks. When she is on the oxygen prongs her oxygen levels drop and they have to keep turning the oxygen up, which is not something they like to do. She keeps dropping throughout the day. When she is on cpap her oxygen levels are stable. On the 4th time she was on prongs, Aden and I stayed at the hospital one evening until 1am because her levels were dropping and we wanted to talk to the doctor to get her back on cpap. The doctor said she was doing fine. We weren't convinced. Sure enough, she was back on cpap 12 hours later. Aden talked to the doctor again and insisted that they not try again unless they have waited 5-7 days in between. We also wondered if she was getting sick since her sister was sick (more on that later). She was coughing a little and wasn't herself. Luckily when she went back on cpap she seemed to do better. She's been very alert this week and the nurses are having fun dressing her in little Christmas clothes. She got too hot in her incubator so she upgraded to a "big girl bed" which doesn't have a top on it. She is getting bigger! She is now 3 lbs 14 oz.

I can't get enough of this pic (above). I just want to eat her up!!

We got some video of Alivia tonight:

Adalyn had a really rough week. She started the week right next to her sister and I was excited to have them so close together. Unfortunately she got sick and had to be moved to a different area of the NICU because she went from a level 2 to a level 3 (because she was intubated and needed more care). She was really lethargic and had a lot of mucus secretions coming out of her mouth. Her oxygen levels kept dropping really low and they finally had to intubate her. They took blood samples and secretion samples and started her on antibiotics until the labs came back 48 hours later. At first they thought she had pneumonia. She didn't move much for a couple days. When I would talk to her, she would try to open her eyes to look at me. It broke my heart. On Wednesday Adalyn "crashed" and turned blue-- even with the ventilator breathing for her. They ripped out the tube in case it was blocked (which it wasn't) and put another one in. Babies are sedated when they are intubated but there wasn't time so she had to have it done without sedation. Poor girl. Finally the labs came back and we found out she has "Serratia" which is a lung infection. It is also very contagious among preemies so she was put on "isolation" which means we have to wear a gown over our clothes and gloves when we visit her. We have to visit Alivia first and then Adalyn and then we have to leave. I wasn't able to hold her for about a week while she was sick. Once the antibiotics started kicking in (they gave her specific ones for serratia) she became very fiesty. I think she is starting to make a name for herself in the NICU. I heard one of the nurses telling her replacement at shift change, "She is kind of wild." When I visit her each day I ask the nurse how she is doing and they usually say, "She is very active and strong." She keeps pulling her feeding tube out and tried multiple times to pull her intubation tube out. Luckily she was doing so well by Saturday that she was able to be extubated and is now back on cpap. She is doing really well on cpap, even better than before. They stopped her feeds for a couple days and she is slowly increasing again. Now that she is feeling better she likes to hold my hand. She has a very strong grip. We are also able to hold her again and she does really well with that. Unfortunately we haven't been able to get pictures of her this week because of how sick she was and because of isolation. We are looking forward to having a huge photo shoot soon so she can catch up to all her sister's photos. She is also getting bigger and now weighs 3 lbs, 15 oz.

Hopefully this coming week goes a lot better than last week!