Monday, August 24, 2009

Tomorrow

Since tomorrow is Reese's birthday, I thought I would re-post my update announcing her birth.

Our precious little angel Reese Lynn was born on Monday morning at 10:07 am. She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces and is 20 inches long. She is absolutely beautiful and she looks like her big brother!

So, that's all the good news. Reese was doing some grunting as soon as she was born and once she was taken to the nursery it was decided that she has some breathing problems and needed to go to the NICU. At that point they decided her breathing problems were due to either an infection (less likely) or the fact that since she was born via C Section, that she hadn't had the opportunity to squeeze all the amniotic fluid out while traveling down the birth canal. This isn't uncommon in C Section babies.

She's been in the NICU since Monday. At first they treated her with "blow by" Oxygen, where they set up a bag valve mask in her bassinet so she could breathe in more Oxygen. Then she was placed in an Oxygen hood that allowed her to breathe in pure Oxygen. That didn't work, so she was placed on C-PAP which basically means that they hooked her up to a machine that would blow air into her lungs in an attempt to let the fluids out and to let the avioli in the lungs start doing their job. She seemed to be responding to the C-PAP well, but this morning they told us that they needed to intubate her and give her Surfactin, which will hopefully rid her of this and have her breathing on her own in the next few days. The reason that they held off on this is because they didn't want to intubate if they didn't have to.

It's mostly been a waiting game for us. I'm recovering OK, and I'm still waiting to see my doctor this morning to find out if I can stay on more night or if I have to leave her today. Brian briefly held her after she was born, but I haven't been able to. I've been pumping a lot to get her some colostrum and to get my milk in. Reese is on a feeding tube so she hasn't had any milk yet. It's also a struggle for me to get down to the NICU because of the C Section so I've been down about twice a day for 45 minutes each.

The whole process has been overwhelming for all of us. It's definitely not what we were expecting and the detachment from our Baby girl has been hard, especially not being able to even hold her. We would appreciate if you kept us all in your thoughts and prayers, but especially Reese. Just pray for her to be able to breathe on her own and to be able to come off all the machines,for her to pick up eating on her own quickly (hopefully via breast) and for her to be released from the hospital and sent home early next week.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I can't post them from the computer in my room. If we go home today I might post some, but in all honesty, I'm really hoping that we don't go home yet.

No comments:

Post a Comment