6 Weeks!

(Kevin) It's a little early, but I'm sitting at home getting ready for bed and anxious to get to San Diego tomorrow thinking about all that has happened in six weeks. Six weeks seems like an eternity ago that also flew by very quickly. For all of us that have been witnessing Karsie's story, just six weeks ago it seemed like any news was terrifying because she was so fragile. I can distinctly remember the first night sleeping just feet away from the NICU doors and every time the doors would open my heart would jumpstart. I was recently told by a friend that every time the phone rang those first few days they would be afraid to answer it. Yet, here we are, six weeks later and we're talking about reflux and crabbiness being problematic. How wonderful is that?

I am tempted at some point to post a huge list of all the odds that Karsie has fought through during this journey. I was recently running a list through my head of everything that she has had to deal with or overcome after birth, but thinking about before she was born and everything she has had to overcome just to arrive at birth was incredible too. Michelle and I are so blessed to have a front row seat to this miracle and we are so glad to share it with everyone. One day all of this will be behind us and we will get to take her home and show you all our miracle. I'm sure there will be moments of frustration and feeling down coming our way as long journeys fuel extreme emotions, but every once in awhile, like now, it's good to step back for a minute out of the brisk pace and look back at the long journey. It's been long, draining, exciting, terrifying, thrilling, humbling, shocking, and unbelievable. But through all of that we have been so thankful for the company. We are sure that many of you have felt all of those too for six weeks, so you know what I mean. Here's to the next six weeks! May God continue to watch over our little girl.

The Snowball Effect

Things have been looking so good lately that one of the Children's Hospital employees said to us that a lot of times when things start to look good and go well that it snowballs because the babies have more energy to spend on less problems, if that makes sense. For example, since Karsie's breathing has been getting better and better, her body is naturally able to concentrate on helping other problems like Pat, which is also getting better faster, which then gives her body time to concentrate on other things too. Hopefully this will continue to be the trend.

A quick update on our status: Karsie is still doing well. Pat is close to coming off the more the granulation tissue grows. They changed her dressing changes to every 12 hours, but then increased the amounts since, after 12 hours, her dressing was drying up and sticking to the granulation. Her feeds have been increased to 7mL, which is where we had to go back a few days ago. While this is good, her TPN level has been increase because Karsie continues to get heavier. She is currently over 3 kilos, which is almost 7 lbs. They are still going up .5 mL a day as long as she doesn't spit up. Her breathing continues to go well and she is tolerating the full 24 hours on nasal cannula. The only hiccup to that is she holds her breath at times because she has reflux. We think this causes her quite a bit of discomfort because she holds her breath and winces, which causes her to desaturate on her 02 levels. However, it doesn't take long for her to get back up once she stops holding her breath.

Finally, the occupation therapist came in and talked with Michelle, as we posted earlier, about how to play with Karsie, which has been great for bonding. She was read to last night and was fascinated by the pictures shown to her in the book. She stared at them intently. This is a new development since it was only a couple of weeks ago that she wouldn't focus for long enough to see a picture.

Kevin is coming back tomorrow which will be good for him to see his girls, but also good for the blog as most of our media (pictures, movies) is done from his computer, so this weekend the blog should produce a lot of that.