Milestones

She did it! She rolled over--both ways from her belly to her back. I was so excited to see it. I had been waiting for this moment for a couple of weeks, wondering if she would even do it. Most of the time on her belly Evelyn spends crying--or more often--yelling in discomfort, so we don't spent a lot of time in that position. Just a few minutes every day. I suppose if lying on her belly were comfortable she'd just put down her head and take a nap.

Rolling over is one of many milestones I'll be marking over the years, but it's one of my favorites. It's like she's realizing there's a whole new world out there. She rolls over--ah, what's this? Mommy's face, and a new view. Okay, I'm smiling. Then she spits up. Hard work, rolling over.

This day was also a milestone in her lungs. After the rollover workout, she slept over three hours without oxygen at a steady 98. Awesome! I had time to build block castles with Maisey, play princesses, and make a snack for us both. All the while checking her monitor every 10 minutes to that same beautiful number: 98. She slept like a normal baby. My day felt almost normal.

The Two Step

Evelyn's echocardiogram yesterday showed that her pressures were back to where they were before we weaned her. So this cold has set her back to square one, basically, despite seeing improvements today. Even yesterday, for example, as with the previous week, the moment she fell asleep her O2 levels dropped with her heart rate. But today, they hung in the high nineties, then mid nineties before slowly declining to the point at which I know I need to put the canula back on. So she still requires the O2 to sleep, but today so far and yesterday too, her saturations have been good when she's awake, albeit with a slightly elevated heart rate.

The doctor thinks this is a temporary condition of the cold and will improve, and we'll be able to wean her back off the oxygen again. But it's worrisome that even a cold--which didn't dampen her spirits or do much to alter her health or temperament in any other way--can silently wreak such havoc on her health, and her parents' nerves.

This is going to be a long winter indeed.

The Slow Dance to Health

It seems like every step forward in progress we make, there are always two steps back. Evelyn has had a cold now for about two weeks, and since last weekend we've had to put her back on oxygen while she sleeps because her saturation levels just keep dropping too low. Her cough has gotten worse last week, and yesterday I heard a lot of noise in her chest when she breathed, and when she coughed it sounded horrible. We called the neonatologist to update her (we called last week when the cold started) and they want to see her tomorrow to see how she's doing and to prevent this from getting worse--to rule out pneumonia.

Evelyn seems fine in every other way. She sleeps well (except for a few coughing spells), has good color and temperature, and seems to be her happy self when she's awake. I'm really curious to know if something else is going on here.

Keeping her monitored has been a challenge too. She's getting much too squirmy and dextrous with her hands to wear the cannula. She still wears the pulse oximeter probe on her foot, and at night she's been wearing the apnea monitor as well. So it seems we're back where we were when we brought her home three months ago.

Cordless Baby!

I got my Christmas wish for a cordless baby! Evie's been off oxygen since Friday December 18, and is doing great. Her last echocardiogram was normal; actually the doctor said her pressures were low, and that was great news, but we're being cautious about sending Maisey back to preschool in cold & flu season. On the one hand, I'm anxious to send her back because I think she needs the social interaction, I could use the break, and Evie could certainly do with a few hours of one-on-one, older sibling jealousy-free mommy time each morning. On the other hand, I'm afraid to send her back because as her first year of preschool, she'll be bringing home all manner of germs. It seems at least one kid out of eight is sick with something, and we know how kids are.

The irony is though, that Evelyn caught a cold anyway. I can't say where for sure, but it could have been any of us. Her cough sounds horrible, but her O2 levels have been pretty good, with the exception of two nights last weekend. We put her back on O2 overnight then and she snapped out of it. It seemed that whenever she fell asleep, her oxygen levels dropped along with her heart rate. And since we wanted her to rest while she slept--and her heart was unlikely to do that working to keep her O2 levels up--we thought the oxygen would help prevent her heart from working too hard. So far so good. The cough seems to get a little worse in the evening, but she's still maintaining good O2 levels. It's just a matter of letting the cold take its course, now, and building tolerance against future germs.