Dr. Su delivers some pretty good news

Good ole Dr. Su called with an update.
You may have read in a prev post that Dr. Su is their primary Dr, and we couldn't feel more fortunate about that. He's way awesome, that's fo sho. He frequently calls us with updates, even if there are no profound changes and it's a "normal" day. I have to do the quotes because "normal" in the NICU is crazy insane for the real world.

Anyway.... Jenna's latest lab results came back negative again. Good sign. She's slightly swollen and a little red, so he thinks she does have an infection, but that it's too weak to enter the body. So, he'll keep her on antibiotics for a few more days. She's been breathing well and hasn't had many apnea's at all. She's also continuing to gain weight. He said he'll probably start her feeding in a couple more days.
That's pretty much sums things up for Jenna.

Blake is doing very good as well. He got a little tired of doing all the hard breathing work on his own, so they gave him a little help by setting the CPAP machine to give him breaths again. He's currently on 20bpm. He's doing great with his feeding and is growing quite well. This past Sunday he measured 13.8 inches long! That's a pretty good improvement from his birth length of 12.4" just 5 weeks ago.

All in all, the kids are doing pretty good. Jenna's news had really helped calm our nerves and re-assure us that she's getting better and this was only a minor set back.

Ya know; the hardest part of the whole NICU experience (at least for me) is that we can have several great days, then at a moments notice everything can turn around, & one of the kids can face a major challenge. At the same time, there are surprising gifts that get snuck in there as well. Case in point: the other night I was talking to Jenna and touched her cheek. With that touch she started suckling on her feeding tube. It was pretty neat. Suckling is a developmental milestone that they should reach around 32-34wks. I asked Dr. Su if that was a good indication; he said the absence of it would be an indicator, but that early reaction was nice, but doesn't really tell us how things may turn on later on. Either way, it was way cute and I loved seeing it.

Time to get some work done.
-J