Today we went the hospital in the afternoon. We were excited to see one of our primary nurses, Courtney. When we got there, Olivia was doing well. The doctor came in to give us our daily update and answer any questions we may have. At the end I decided to ask a question I knew the answer to already, “Are we still waiting to do skin-to-skin until after she is off the jet ventilator?” Before the doctor could answer, Courtney said “We are going to try today at 3:15. I didn’t have a chance to tell you yet, but we wanted to surprise you.” I immediately began to cry. It has been 29 days since I was able to hold her last and this is only the second time in the six weeks of her little life.

3:15 could not come soon enough. We would start with 30min and see how she tolerated it and then if it all went well, we could try and go longer. I was confident she would do well because last time she did great. They settled her on my chest and it was heaven for an hour. I would have stayed there forever. She of course did amazing and we couldn’t say thank you enough to Courtney and our respiratory therapist for the day, Beth, for making it happen.

Here are some updates on Olivia:

• She is almost done with her round of antibiotics for pneumonia. They have been working and on her chest xrays you can see a difference.
• She has pulmonary edema and they are giving her a diuretic to see if it will help it. So far it hasn’t shown a big difference. So tomorrow we may discuss what other options there are.
• They have been able to lower her jet settings, so crossing our fingers that the support of the jet continues to decline.
• Her oxygen support has been between the 30s and low 50s. Mostly in the 40s.
• She has been blowing out diapers, sometimes three in one changing. And we appreciate that she has saved those diapers for the nurses and not us.
• She has gained more weight…and she has more than doubled her birth weight. She is now 2lbs 9oz! She is getting so big and we are so proud of her.

Lil’ Liv’s Dates:

• Age: 41 days
• Gestation: 31 weeks and 4 days

Until next time…