Morning update, May 4, 2010

Each morning, the team of doctors, nurses and other specialists working on Penelope have rounds.  The person in charge of the team (Penelope's team is headed by a nurse practitioner) briefs the others on her stats and progress.  Parents are encouraged to attend the rounds and to ask questions or bring up any concerns.  Each morning, either Trent or I attend.  Generally I attend them during the week and both of us or just Trent attend them on the weekends. 

Penelope's round for 5/4/10.

She has surpassed her birth weight!  This is great news.  Almost all new babies, whether premature or full term, lose weight after they are born and it takes about two weeks for them to regain the weight.  The doctors say she looks healthy.  It is common for preemies to have problems regulating their breathing because their lungs are not fully developed and sometimes their brains forget to tell their lungs to breathe.  After all, they are really supposed to still be in the womb and shouldn't need to use them yet.  A common breathing condition is apnea, when the babies stop breathing for a few seconds.  Another is bradycardia, when the hear rate slows to less than 100 beats per minute. She only had a few episodes of this over the past 24 hours, which is an improvement from the past couple of weeks. 

There are a couple things the team is looking at closely today.  When she Penelope was born, she had an open heart valve.  This valve that usually closes up when term babies are born.  She received medicine that closed the valve. Today, the doctor heard a slight murmur in her chest and thinks it may have opened again.  This is not uncommon and can be fixed with minor surgery.  They will conduct an echo cardiogram and x-rays to see check.  The results for both of these should be available late today or tomorrow.  Also, her blood ph is off.  This could be caused by her immature kidneys creating too much urine or it could be caused by an infection.  Samples of her blood and urine will be take to test for infection. These test results will be available in about 48 hours. 

Penelope seems comfortable despite the poking and prodding from the doctors and is breathing well.  She is sleeping a lot, which is good because she needs to sleep to grow. 

I changed her diaper a couple of times today and put aquaphor all over her skin.  Preemies have very dry, delicate skin that needs to stay moisturized. While the nurse was taking her blood for the tests, Penelope sucked on my little finger, which helped keep her calm.  We don't get to do a lot of "regular" parent things right now, and even these little interactions mean so much. 

Thanks for checking in.  I'll update again soon.