Lillian and Ashley
Lillian Grace is 43 days old.
Lillian gained 30 grams yesterday, and now weighs 2 lbs, 12 ozs (1260 grams). She’s down to 28 breaths per minute support from her ventilator, and continues to have good results from her blood gas tests.
Ashley attended the grand rounds meeting with the medical staff today; they are pleased with Lillian’s progress, particularly with her adjustment to the new ventilator: they pronounced it “slow, but steady improvement.” Ashley asked about Lillian’s lung x-rays, which show not much change: the team told her that clinical progress (i.e., how she’s doing on the vent and on weaning from it) is really the key measure right now; the x-rays are unlikely to show much change for some time. Her lungs are growing, and that is good as well; but she will probably have respiration issues for at least the next 5 or 6 years.
Ashley has been producing larger volumes of milk than Lillian can eat, and her freezer at home is full of her frozen milk, as is the freezer at the NICU. She is in the process of donating a portion of her milk to Mother’s Milk Bank, an organization whose mission is to accept, pasteurize and dispense donor human milk by physician prescription, primarily to premature and ill infants (you can find out more about them at the link). The other morning, Josh made his morning coffee, then found out they were out of (cow’s) milk. He really likes milk in his coffee. He stared at that freezer full of milk, and began to form the thought: “I wonder if…?”, but decided that even carrying the thought further might result in his becoming an outcast from decent society.
Ashley got to kangaroo today and we’ve added a slide show at https://thedenbyclan.wordpress.com/slide-shows/september-kangaroo/
Thanks for your prayers and support.
The Denby Clan 