The Thomas Family of Five: Twins 3/18/09

Well lets see... mommy got woke up this morning by the phone ringing at 12:50am to see that it is the hospitals number calling. This can never be a good sign. I answered the phone hello and the person on the other end of the phone says "This is doctor... everything is okay but we had to re-intibate Kali due to her breathing and we are having to give her some blood because she is anemic. Other than that, everything is going good." We finished the conversation and got off the phone. Well of course mommy is then wide a wake and cannot go back to sleep. So needless to say, Kali is now intibated again (on the breathing machine). They had to stop her feeds because they are thinking maybe she has an infection or because she is premature, her lungs are just doing this (which is normal for preemie babies). Also, they hear her murmer in her heart a little louder each day. They also say this could be why she had to be intibated again. If you didn't know, all babies are born with a hole in their heart. When they are in their mommy's bellys, instead of the babies lungs having to work, the hole allows the mommy to provide the necessary nutients to the baby through the hole. When the baby is born, the hole normally closes on its own but in preemie babies, this isn't always the case. They have been watching hers and it seems to be getting louder. They are doing an echo today which is an ultrasound of her heart to see how big the PDA (hole) is. They have two options on getting the hole to close if it isn't closing on its own. The first way is by antibiotics. They give the antibiotics every 12 hours for 3 doses (1 1/2 days) and then if it still doesn't close, they some times have to go in and manually close it. So we still don't know exactly what they are going to do until we get the results from the echo. They stopped her feeds in case they end up having to go in and close the PDA so she will be off of breast milk for a few days. Kali weighs 2lbs 7oz today and Keaton weighs 2lbs 8oz. Keaton is doing really good. They increased his feeds to 17cc and they decreased his oxygen settings, which is great. He will get an ultrasound of his liver tomorrow to see how that is going. Hopefully it is shrinking or atleast staying the same in size. We definitely do not want it to grow. Today, mommy took Keaton and Kali their Easter stuff. Mommy, daddy, and Kenna went and got all of their Easter baskets and decorations so we could take it to the hospital. It turned out really cute. Today, Aunt Kelli came to the hospital to see the babies. She got to learn a lot about all the different machines and what all the noises the machines make mean. Mommy is getting pretty good at teaching someone about all the different things that the nurses and the machines do. She is going to be a pro by time we get to leave the hospital.