Wednesday, March 26, 2014

All of the Time in the World



Dear Ellie,

It's hard to believe where you were just a week ago: back on the Endotracheal tube with worse respiratory stats than ever before.  As of this morning, a little less than a week after being extubated, you are almost at atmospheric levels of oxygen.  The "assisted breathes" given to you went down by 1/4th in one day.

As weeks and weeks went by with you still stuck on the endotracheal tube, I was resigned to the fact that you'd be on supplemental oxygen by 36 weeks and, thus, be diagnosed with chronic lung disease.  But now?  You have four full weeks to improve.  Suddenly, it feels like we have all the time in the world.  You may not have chronic lung disease, afterall.

2 comments:

  1. Lookin good Ellie! She's getting so big. How much does she weigh now? I'm curious what the average percentile is in weight for a micropreemie compared to a 32 weeker. I went skimming through old photos and had forgotten how tiny she was. She's going to be a behemoth soon.

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    1. That's a question I've been investigating quite a bit. From what I've gathered, most micro-preemies "fall off the chart" when it comes to growth relative to fetuses still in utero. So for instance, a fetus born at 26 weeks that is in the 35th percentile at birth will fall to the 2nd percentile by week 32. Ellie was at the 50th percentile and fell to the 40th. We thought she was in the 10th percentile before we discovered those extra 100 grams, and that would have actually been good for a micro preemie. The fact that she's actually in the 40th percentile is quite remarkable given where she came from. Her length is really, really small but that's the least important indicator, from what I know.

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