A Better Day

Charlottes bed. They are using her as a poster child to convince the hospital to buy another one. They are ~65,000 a piece.

This is Charlotte's IV pole #1. She is on quite a few drugs, but we are so thankful that they seem to be working.

Charlotte on Peter's chest sleeping.

Peter doing "Kangaroo Care." This was the first time either of us got to actually hold Charlotte.

Charlotte resting comfortably yesterday.

Today was a much better day for Charlotte. Last night the doctors decided to temporarily paralyze her so that she would not fight the ventilator so much when she breathes. It seems to have worked very well. They were able to reduce her ventilator setting to a level more consistent with breathing room air in a normal environment. She was also assigned her own nurse 24/7
I am going to do the update systems based. Overall picture is, she is doing well. Her heart is working better and her lungs are looking better every hour.

Heart:
The heart failure that was occurring yesterday has improved today. They used Dopamine and Epinephrine to cause her heart to contract more forcefully. The good news is that her heart responded very well to these medications and they have already started to wean her down on the dopamine. She was also given steroids to increase her blood pressure. Her blood pressure has been in a good range and stable throughout the day. She currently has 3 IV poles with ~8 different drugs running into her.
Lungs:
Now that she is paralyzed by the medication, she has much improved lung function. She is down to room air on the oxygen setting and is coming down on the other settings as well. Her lungs are still "wet" from all of the blood they were getting via the PDA. Being able to oxygenate well at 24 oxygen(close to room air) though is a great sign.
Kidneys:
Thought I would throw in an organ that is functioning very well to make her sound better. :)


Amanda and I had a rough day yesterday. Nothing like being told that your 2.5 week old daughter is having heart failure. She was pretty sick. We notice that we are snapping at each other more and we are trying to work on giving the other person more slack. We each are dealing with the constant stress in different ways. Run of the mill irritations of life seem to be magnified by the stress. They warned us to expect this, so we are trying to recognize it for what is really is. We appreciate all of the help we have been getting with meals and Caleb. It really helps.