The last couple of days have been tough for Olivia, and then today hit us hard:

This morning I talked to the doctor and they said they were going to give Olivia another blood transfusion. They are getting more spaced out, which is good. Her last one was 10 days ago.

Over the last couple of days her CO2 has been high and has not been coming down so they decided that they were going to replace her intubation tube. She still had the smallest one and she has grown so they wanted to give her a bigger one. With the smaller one, there is more chance of it plugging and having more secretions around it.

At around noon I was in the hospital lobby checking in to go up to the NICU, when I got another call from the doctor. She informed me they had a hard time getting the tube out because of all the gunk (my words, not hers). But because of that her heart actually stopped and they had to do chest compressions for a minute and a half. That stopped me in my tracks. Once I got up to her pod they said that the minute and a half was a short amount of time so there shouldn’t be any ramifications from it. Hearing that Olivia went through that was one of our hardest moments yet. We just wanted to hold her and let her know it was going to all be OK, but we couldn’t do that. The best we could do is be by her side, talk to her, and give her time to recover, rest, and heal. It was very scary but we trying to focus on the positive.

She has been doing much better with the new tube. The CO2 has gone down, they have lowered the jet settings, and they even got her oxygen down into the high 20s and low 30s. The new blood has kicked in and she is back to being her feisty self. Prayers that everything keeps trending in the positive direction and if it does, they may try and take her off the jet tomorrow which means we are closer to doing skin to skin again.

Being a parent of a baby in the NICU, and a micro preemie at that, is hard. Every hour you have a different emotion. But we are so thankful to all of you for supporting us. We know we have hundreds praying and sending up good vibes for our little family and especially for Olivia. We can feel it. So, keep it up 🙂

Olivia’s Dates:

• Age: 36 days
• Gestation: 30 weeks and 5 days

Until next time…