Update on Lydia

So... I think it's easier to update peeps on Lydia using this blog. We apologize if you've called us or e-mailed us and we haven't gotten back to you. Oftentimes we don't get home til really late, or we get home and we're just out of steam. Our lives revolve around work, hospital, Lydia and sleep right now. We appreciate you giving us the space we need to take it day by day. Lydia improves week by week. But we still need to ride the week out and it is stressful. We know it takes time. We know there are ups and downs. Sometimes it helps to hear that, sometimes it doesn't ;) So we take it day by day.

Lydia has been in the MUSC Children's Hospital Neonatal ICU for a month now. She will actually be 1 month actual age tomorrow, and 32 1/2 weeks gestational. She weighed 3lbs 12oz as of yesterday afternoon. She is taking her feeds well and putting on weight. She's out of the incubator and seems to be doing well maintaining her own temperature. Her red blood cell count was low yesterday so they gave her another blood transfusion. They also had to do a full work up again to see if she has an infection - blood test, urine test, spinal tap. They started her on antibiotics just in case.

She now has an IV in her arm and in her scalp. Uggg it is ugly...but the nurse assures us it's superficial and looks much worse than it really is. They had to shave some of her hair to put it in so she'll have a little patch of hair missing! It's all rough but she seems to do well with all the poking and prodding. We're hoping that this helps with her breathing. She's been having some episodes of bradycardia where her heart rate drops and then her oxygen level drops also. She still has some shallow breathing so they also upped the caffeine. They did take her off the CPAP machine (some fandangled tubes that force air up her nose) and she is now on a regular nasal canula (the tubey thing that they stick around your head and up your nose so that you're breathing more oxygen). SO we just wait to see what today brings.