Somewhat of a signifigant 4th of July update

Today we were finally able to sit down and have a real conference with a nicu doctor. One of the doctors volunteered himself to be the boys "primary physician" while they're in there. We'll have all of our meetings with him and he'll be the doctor we go to with any important questions.

So, first, the daily updates...

Addison is still tolerating his feedings. He's at 11ml right now and his magic number is 14. If he can handles 14ml feedings, they won't need to run iv fluids. If he's able to handle 14ml feedings, they'll start adding extra vitamins to the breastmilk to help him put on weight.

His ventilator seems to be pretty steady. He was turned up to 47% oxygen. That's the highest he's been that we know of but the doctor and nurse still insist that it's not that high.

Riley has started to get food again. He was getting 3.5ml and had only had his first feeding a few hours before we got there. His lungs sound better and his x-rays seem to show no problems with his belly. Riley's nurse told us that he was awake all day. When she came in at 10:30, he was wide awake and when we were in to visit, he was looking all around!

Riley is holding steady at about 30% osygen. He was down to 28% when we were there and very rarely has to go above 35%.

So, onto the meeting with the doctor. Forgive me if some things are somewhat confusing. We were thrown a lot of medical talk today and while the doctor did explain it, things have become jumbled.

We talked today about the boys lungs. Both of them show damage to the lungs which is unavoidable right now because they're exposed to the ventilator and oxygen. Riley did have an x-ray show that he has a partially collapsed lung but that they're not going to over ventilate to try to force the lungs all of the way open. We were told that they had chronic lung disease but that over time, the lungs should heal themselves. The doctors goal for the boys right now is to have them off the ventilators within the next month (what would be 32 weeks gestation).

Because of how early they are, they're both at high risk for retinopathy and they'll be screened for that at 6 weeks of age. If they're able to catch it early enough and it's not advanced, laser surgery is done and almost always successful. There was talk of a chance of the babies needing glasses and if the laser therapy didn't work, it could result in blindness.

He also told us it's no longer a matter of "Will the make it through the night?" and now it's, "What kind of progress is being made and what's the prediction for quality of life" It made us feel good that we can now go to sleep at night and not expect a phone call in the middle of the night. Our babies are stable and overall, everyone is happy with their health, they're just little and they need to learn how to work. He also said that their chances of making it were dramatically increased. He said the one thing that he would be concerned about right now, are brain bleeds and the fact that both of our boys have shown no brain bleeds is great. He said there's a very small amount of babies that are born this early and don't show any type of brain bleed.

We left the nicu today with smiles on our faces and we had a lot of questions answered and concerns addressed.