Sweet baby face

These are both from today, showing where Camilla is now, and (finally!) a bit more of what her face looks like. She's been so covered by the CPAP mask most of the time since her birth that these glimpses have been rare. The great news, however, is that they are becoming more frequent, because she is spending more time every day off of the CPAP and only with the assistance of a nasal cannula, the thin tube just below her nose.

So much has happened since we last posted! Camilla has been holding her own since birth, but has started to make some real progress ahead in the past few days. Overall, she's doing really well. Here's Camillas current progress report in more detail:

She's gaining weight: she lost several ounces initially, but had returned to within 5 grams of her birth weight by one week old.

She's still breathing on her own, and needing less and less assistance: she never needed to be intubated, but had been on the CPAP since birth. Within the last few days, she has gone from trying out the cannula for one hour a day to now wearing it for 18 hours a day!

Which leads me to one of the most important factors in her progress report: her heart. The duct outside of her heart is still open. Two rounds of medication failed to close it, and in fact it remained fairly large. At the beginning of this week, the possibility of surgery to close that duct was being discussed--a scary thought for us, since it would mean that Camilla would have to go under general anesthesia, as well as having another medication to paralyze her during the surgery so that they could perform with precision the ligation on this tiny duct.

However, the doctors wanted to wait a few days to see how she was breathing--the major indicator of whether this open duct was causing her problems or not (if the duct remains open, blood that has already been to the lungs cycles through the heart and then is pumped back to the lungs, rather than out to the rest of the body, thus causing more work for the heart and the potential for more fluid to collect in her lungs). Thankfully, her breathing couldn't be better! The doctors decided that they aren't even going to do another echocardiogram to see what the duct looks like because she is doing so well with her breathing, and in fact is needing less and less assistance. They'll just keep seeing how she does and then check the duct later--there's still the possibility that it could close on its own. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for this particularly.

Eating: Camilla is now in her 4th day of receiving milk through a feeding tube. Since they shouldn't be digesting anything for several months yet, preemies digestive systems get off to a very slow start. She's still receiving pretty much all of her nutrition through an IV, but she's also now receiving about 1/2 teaspoon of milk every 3 hours and is now digesting it well. After a few more days, they'll start to slowly increase the amount of milk she's getting, and that's when she can really start to gain weight.

Stay tuned--we'll keep you updated here, though it may take us a while to catch up.