Weekend Update

Now that Callie is a little bigger, the nurses are consistently letting us hold her on every good day that she has. It is such a blessing! On days when Daddy is at work, Mommy can do Kangaroo Care and when Daddy is here, we get to dress her up in her cute preemie clothes and take turns holding her! This is Callie today right before we took her out of her isolette.

Johns Hopkins NICU has 14 Neonatologists that rotate coverage of the unit every two weeks. One issue Callie has is that her Endo-Tracheal tube is getting too small for her and she has a significant leak. This basically means that she isn't getting all of the support that the ventilator is providing. At some point, they need to take it out and put in a larger size. Her doctor from last week was very happy to let her ride on the current ventilator settings and current ET tube, assuming her stats remained consistent, when for the most part they have been. Then her new Neonatologist came on yesterday and has changed the plan. He has taken her vent settings down two levels and plans to attempt extubation tomorrow. If she isn't ready, they will go ahead and put in the bigger tube. It would be wonderful if Callie is ready and could get rid of that tube. You can really see her annoyance with it. She is always trying to move her head away from it...you feel bad for her, but at this point, she does need it. They tell us that many times, extubation is not successful and they have to try several times before it works. So, we hope that it works and pray that either way it isn't traumatic for our girl.