May 17, 2007

This is such a trying time. It is truly one step forward and two steps back. As soon as we hear something positive about one of you we hear two or three bad thing about the one or two of you. Sometimes mommy just cries and cries because I love you all so much and I feel like it is my fault that you have to go through this. I get so mad because you should still be in my belly growing and not in these incubators!

Savannah, you are doing good. You are doing great on CPAP, but not well enough to go to the short prongs yet. They tried yesterday to move you to the sort prongs, but unfortunately you weren't ready. You only lasted about 15 minutes before they had to put those big, yucky tubes back in your pour tender nose. I can't wait until you get to go on the short prongs not only because it's an advancement in how you are doing but also because I love being able to see your beautiful little face. They also did another brain ultrasound, and nothing has changed. You haven't gotten better, but you haven't gotten worse either and that is good. Hopefully your brother and sister will follow your led and start doing better soon.

Cheyenne, honey, you have got to get better! We want you to get off that ventilator and back on CPAP. You have got to start doing your own breathing. I know it is hard, but you have to get stronger. You seem to be doing a lot better, but you chest x-rays look much worse. They did an echo on your PDA and it has closed. That is good because they were thinking that it had opened back up. Thank God it had not! They decided to do another brain ultrasound on you today too. Good News!!! No brain bleeds for you. So our goal for you is to get you off that ventilator.

Brody, my little man, I love you so much. I want to hold you in my arms so bad. We got the results of your second ultrasound back, and bad news. It looked like your ventricles had swollen more. The doctors said you still have the grade three bleeds but you also have hydrocephalus. What that means is that blood clots and scar tissue can plug the normal drainage of cerebrospinal fluid out of the ventricles, disrupting its flow and reabsorbtion. They did a spinal tap to try and get some of the fluid out and some of the pressure off. They got about 6cc's out and they did another ultrasound. They said that the spinal tap did help and they are going to continue to do them every other day or so. They did another spinal tap yesterday and you have had a lot of extra oozing so they are going to wait to do another one. You will get another ultrasound tomorrow to see what we have accomplished. Hopefully this will work and your body will take over and we won't have to look at what we need to do next. We thought we were going to get to put you on the short pronged CPAP today. But you had a rough morning this morning. You were just not happy and we had to bump you up to 80% on your oxygen when the nurse did her cares. So they are going to leave you on the CPAP for a couple more days. You are our special little boy and I sit here with you everyday and just pray that you will be o.k.

You are all eating and increasing every 12 hours on you feds. That is great!!! I didn't get to hold any of you today and that makes me very sad. I love holding all of you in my arms and telling you a million times that I love you. I sing to you and you don't even seem to mind that I sound terrible. I can tell that you recognize me and that makes me smile. I love you all so much that it hurts my heart to see you in here. Everyone says how wonderful you are doing for being so young, but I still want you to be doing better. I would trade places with all three of you if I could. I am so sorry that you have to go through all of this. I pray that tomorrow will be a better day!!
Mommy and Daddy love you guys so much.