the lonely trip home from the hospital.

Charlotte:
She is doing as well as we can hope for. She lives in the incubator pictured above where the temp is ~95 degrees and the humidity is 85%. She has a light shining on her constantly to help reduce the biliruben build up in her blood which causes jaundice in most a lot of newborns. Her head is pretty much completely covered with a hat and blinders so that the light will not damage her fragile eyes. She is on the Ventilator on CPAP (Continous positive Airway Pressure)settings with either a nasal canula or a face mask strapped to her head. CPAP works like blowing up a balloon. It is hard when you first start blowing it up, but after a few breaths it gets a lot easier. The CPAP keeps the lungs from completely collapsing with each breath making it much easier to take the next breath. This is a good sign because it means that her lungs are doing most of the work, they just need a little help vs. on ventilator settings where the machine is doing most of the work.
She likes to move her arms around and usually has one hand resting on her chin.

The next big test will be whether something called the Ductus Arterious will close. The ductus is a blood vessel that reroutes the blood away from the non functioning lungs during development in utero. It usually spontaneously closes in most term infants after they take their first breath. Failure of this shortcut to close within 24 hours of birth is concerning because it can lead to very high pressures in the lungs and ultimately Right sided Congestive heart failure. This morning they said that it was not yet closed and that they would give her medication today to try and speed up the process of closure. If the medication does not work, it will require surgery to close. Hopefully it decides to close on its own.

Amanda: She is doing well considering what has happened in the past week. She is currently in a Percocet induced deep sleep. She is in a good deal of pain from the C-section. She was discharged today and it was tough to watch the other mothers leave with their happy sleeping newborns, while we left without Charlotte as she clung to life in the NICU. We were happy for the other mothers, it was just hard to have the difference in our situations so clearly displayed.

Peter: I am discovering that it is a lot more fun to be on the doctor side of things then the patient side. The first class in medical school where you dissect a cadaver from from head to toe teaches you, among other things, how to objectify the HE-- out of any situation. Instead of a patient being a father of four with a loving wife, he becomes the 35 year old Caucasian male with presenting with chest pain, shortness of breath and diaphoresis .....
It has been hard not to objectify what is happening with Charlotte. Hard not to become preoccupied with the ventilator settings, oxygen saturation, or the tower of different drugs/nutrition that is running into her IV's. I have to catch myself and remember that it is my daughter under all of the tubes and wires and not just another interesting patient.

Caleb: He has been doing remarkably well. We are thankful to all of the people that have extended offers to watch him as we go through this. He loves to play with other kids and asks us every day whether he can go and "play with kids" today. He says that he has a baby sister, but I am not sure how deep that understanding goes. We were practicing her name today with him and he seemed excited about it.

I think that Amanda is going to setup a separate blog for all things Charlotte while she is in the hospital. She will post a link to it here when she does.