Guess Who is Breathing on Her Own!

 Yep, that's right! At the end of last week they had started Madeline on steroids in preparation to take her off the vent on Saturday morning. Well Madeline had other plans. On Friday morning I was stuck at home and unable to go up to the hospital (I had mastitis and was dealing with a 103 degree fever.....no fun). I got a call from the doctor that Madeline had pulled out her own breathing tube and since they were planning on removing it the next day anyway, they decided to just leave it out and see how she did. Well, little girl must have known she was ready because she has been off the vent since and has done great! I was in complete shock! My fever finally broke by that evening and I was able to go up to the hospital. She looked great! I think she knew how stressed I was every day we had tried to remove it in the past, so she saw I wasn't there that day, and decided she'd just take care of it herself so I wouldn't have to go through another stressful day of watching the doctor's pull the tube out and then stare at the monitors in fear all day. Such a smart little girl! ;)

So now Madeline is on a high humidity oxygen at 3 liters. Mason is now on 1 liter of oxygen. They both are tolerating much more breast milk (still through their NG tubes) and the nurses are fortifying my milk with extra calories and protein. Madeline's head ultrasounds are continuing to come back stable and the bleed is starting to "dissolve". Her heart murmur is even starting to become difficult for the nurses to hear so hopefully this means the duct is starting to close up on its own. All in all everything is really looking up. The focus over the next few weeks is to just grow and gain weight. They both had their OT and PT evaluations today. Both therapists said they thought everything looked great and they saw nothing of concern. Our homework is to start working on sucking on a binki in preparation for nursing and a bottle.

Jason was able to give Mason a bath 

And after the bath we put them together for the first time since they were born! (Madeline was still on the vent at this point)

Holding hands! 

Mason checking out his sister

Here's a video from their little hang out together session! 

Pics of Madeline off the vent! Love seeing her little personality now! 

 

Working on the Binki sucking

Few more pics of Mason:

On Saturday we were able to dress them up for a few minutes and have a little photo session. I put the smallest onsies we had on them and they were still huge! But they looked so cute! And they were able to hang out together again for a few minutes. 

 

And my favorite picture to date....