Thank You

We wanted to take a moment to thank you all for all your continued love, support and prayers throughout this journey. It is so nice to look on here at the end of the day and see your encouraging messages for us and our little girl. It truly helps to know we have so much positive energy behind us.

This picture is of Callie trying to get away during her first bath this weekend! It was the first time we saw her without all of her tubes and leads.

My Thumb!

Today, while Mommy was holding Callie, she found her thumb! It was so cute! She has a hard time actually coordinating it most of the time, but today she was able to suck on it all by herself!!

Medically, today had its ups and downs. This morning, Callie had her first eye exam. It is very common for premies to get a disease called ROP, Retinopathy of Prematurity. If diagnosed early, they are able to perform laser surgery. But if left undetected, it can lead to blindness. So they start these exams on the babies when they are still fairly young. So far, Callie is disease free! They will check her again in two weeks. The problem is that these exams are very traumatic for the babies. They warned us ahead of time to expect a bad 24 hours following the eye exam, but it is still hard to prepare to watch your baby struggle. We definitely saw that she was off this afternoon and evening, with an increased amount of Bradys. We just pray that she feels like herself again tomorrow!

A Little Perspective

So while our little Callie is growing every day, she still has a long way to go. We decided to lay a regular newborn outfit next to her just to compare sizes and I have to say we were surprised. Being with Callie everyday, our perspective on the size of babies has drastically changed...I really feel like every baby is two pounds! So laying a full term outfit next to her really brought us back to reality. Grow Callie Grow!!

Look, I have two chins!!

It seams as though our Callie is finally starting to show a little of her weight gain. She is still really tiny and has a long way to go, but as you can see from this picture of her last night, she is starting to get a second chin!! We love it!!

Latest Update

Callie has had some minor set backs over the last couple of days. They had pushed her down to one liter of oxygen on Tuesday and she just wasn't ready. She started to have more of her episodes where she Brady's and Desats. So they decided to put her back on the heated three liter nasal cannula. We are happy with this decision, becuase we would rather that she use her calories to grow not struggle to breathe. The other thing they decided to do was give her another blood transfusion. Her numbers were getting kind of low and she tends to have set backs when that happens. The blood she got today was her Daddy's! Lee did a Direct Donation through the Red Cross and it came through today for her! Other than that, our girl has been resting nicely.

Relaxing

So this is our Callie, lounging around enjoying life without a tube in her throat! We can't begin to tell you how much better she looks off of the ventillator. We still have a long way to go, but this was a nice step! Over the last two days, they have decreased Callie's oxygen support from 3 liters to a 2 liter cannula. Other than that, they have increased her calorie intake. Since she is already on full feeds, they can't increase the volume, so they add supplemental calories to help fatten her up! They have even started talking about a possible transfer back to St. Joe's in the near future. They just need to get clearence from Neuro.

I am breathing on my own!!

Today was a big day for our Callie, they took out her breathing tube and she is off the ventilator! Normally, the next step down from the Ventilator is a breathing machine called CPAP, but they decided to skip that machine and try her on a nasal cannula. So far, so good!! Nasal cannulas deliver a higher than normal amount of oxygen to help babies oxygenate their bodies. Nasal cannulas also provide a small amount of pressure as the oxygen blows into the nose, which can help babies’ lungs to stay inflated and can remind them to breathe. She has been relaxing and breathing on her own since around1 o'clock...we can't begin to tell you how much more comfortable she looks! They have said that many times preemies will take a step back and have to be intubated again, but we are praying that won't happen and Callie will continue to breathe on her own! Either way, we are just so grateful she is getting a break from the ET Tube!

This picture is right after they took the breathing tube out. As you can see, she is happily blowing bubbles! The white on her face is residue from the tape (this is now all off!).


We also want to point out that our daughter was wearing purple in the last picture because she is a girl, NOT because she is cheering on the Ravens! Daddy will let her decide if she is interested in sports, but if she is, she will be chanting E-A-G-L-E-S! Also, notice the size of a full term baby bib on our girl!