April 24th, 2007

A change over the weekend has made things easier. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Wesley is made up of 4 units. When the twins were first born, they each obviously needed a lot of the doctors' and nurses' immediate attention. Because of that, Kinnick and Carver ended up in different units. Therefore, whenever we've been at the hospital, we have only been able to be with one of the babies at a time. Kinnick recently became stable enough that they were able to move her into the same unit as Carver. In fact, now they are located next to each other (in separate incubators.) So now we don't have to split our time at the hospital between the babies. That has been nice!

The babies have both been doing pretty well the past few days. Kinnick continues to do better than Carver.

In my last update, I said that Kinnick had gotten bigger than Carver, but at that point, she still had some water weight due to swelling. She is back down to 1 lb. 11 oz. and Carver weighs 1 lb. 13 oz. They are gaining a little "good" weight and have lost most of their excess fluid.

Kinnick has not been having as many seizures lately.

Her feedings have been going well recently. She is up to 7 ml every 3 hours (which isn't very much, but is more than the 1 ml they started with!) Her digestive system seems to be working okay at this point.

Carver's feedings were at 3 ml, but they temporarily stopped his feedings on Sunday. His stomach was getting bigger, so they stopped the feedings to see if it was possibly just gas. They'll probably try again soon.

Carver's lungs have been doing better. They've been trying to reduce his dependency on the ventilator and today were able to move him back to a different ventilator , like one that he had been on before. The first few hours on that machine have gone well today.

Kinnick continues to do well with her breathing. At times she is only needing 21% oxygen, which is the same as the air we breathe.
I mentioned previously that they were debating whether Carver's brain hemmorhage was a grade 3 or a grade 4. Now that it has shrunk some, they can tell that it was a grade 4 hemmorhage, which means there was some brain tissue damaged. At this point, they don't know the extent of the damage. Since the brain is still developing, it is possible that the brain might rewire itself to compensate for the damaged area. The portion of the brain that was damaged is responsible for motor skills. The doctors believe there is a 75% likelihood that he will have some degree of cerebral palsy. They will know more once they can do an MRI, but that will probably not be possible for a few months.

We continue to be optimistic and are up for the challenges that exist now, as well as the ones that lie ahead. We appreciate everyone's concern and interest.