Love is like oxygen (Part 2)

More news - for a week or so now, Anna has not had oxygen during the day at all - just from 6:30 pm to 7am. Well, on Friday we took delivery of a machine to measure Anna's blood oxygen saturation levels (SATS), so we can take her off the oxygen supply at night too. We attach a sensor to her toe with some sticky tape and the alarm goes off if her SATS fall below 85%; the target is high 90%s.

So far so good - the alarm has gone off several times each night but only because Anna has been wriggling and the sensor has come away from her foot! Her SATs have remained at 96% - 100%, which shows that she doesn't seem to need the oxygen supply at all now. Hurray! The immediate effect is that her face is having a chance to recover from months of having tape attached to it.

Here's a lovely pic of les girls!

Happy!

This is how we see Anna most of the time now* - without tubes, and loving it!

*Naturally, she has her moments... generally a string of 'em in the hour or so leading up to bedtime !!

Blubber

Well, Anna astonished us all today at the weigh in - she had put on only 3oz over the past fortnight and then today another 8oz appeared on the scales. She has escaped the dreaded NG tube - hoorah!

Big news!

We have had the date through for Anna's operation. She has to go in to the RVI on November 21st to have her op on November 22nd.

We both feel great trepidation (she's so well!), but it will be great to move forward and get things back to normal by Christmas. The question is, "Where will Anna rest her hands once her bump has been taken away?".

Janie
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Keep on keeping on

We had an emotional week as one of our friends from GEEPS (parents' support group on the Net) lost her newborn son this week. We appreciate more than ever how lucky we have been.

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Anna is continuing to do well. She is off the oxygen almost all day now - we just pop her back on for an hour or so around midday. On Friday, Juliet (our lovely community nurse) will come and check she's okay late afternoon and, if so, we will get the go ahead to leave the O2 off all day every day. We'll then tackle the nights, which involves having a probe attached (painlessly!) to Anna which sets off an alarm if her O2 saturation levels fall below a certain point.

Her feeds are not going quite so well and she put on a meager 2ozs in weight this week. She is still breastfeeding every two hours and very unimpressed by solids and bottle feeds. The health visitors say that sometimes babies who have been on O2 have very sensitive mouths, but hopefully she'll take to solids soon as the feeding is a bit tiring.

We are also trying to find something to take the sting out of her sore cheeks. They get irritated by her O2 tubes. We have tried Sudocrem, E45, Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream, coconut cream and Oil of Olay, but nothing seems to work. We have just received a tube of Aloe Vera gel from Andy's mum and dad, so we will give that a go over the next few days, but any suggestions are gratefully received!

Janie
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