A Plan to Go Home

You read that correctly, we've put a plan in place. Before I offer the details, Kirsten and I wanted to send a thank you to all of my co-workers at Treasury. Everyone at work has been extremely supportive of our situation and has allowed me tremendous flexibility with my schedule. On top of all that support, they also held a really nice shower for us yesterday afternoon. Knowing that Kirsten and I are big baseball fans, they ensured that Madeleine's first baseball outfit will be a Nationals outfit-- sorry to the Grandpas that support the Tigers and Yankees respectively. Again, Kirsten and I are humbled by the support we continue to receive and can't say enough thank yous!

Now, here are the details that I've been waiting to write for nearly four months: The doctors have established Madeleine's homecoming date as next Wednesday, July 2. Here are the details:

- Madeleine has reached full feeds of 47 cc's every three hours. She is processing the food very well and we're just hoping that she won't run into any issues in the next 6 days.

- Bottle feeding continues to slowly improve. Since Madeleine hasn't fully mastered bottle feeding, we're bringing her home with a feeding tube. This has been expected for a while and we think that within a few weeks, we can improve feeding and get her feeding exclusively from the bottle.

- Breathing: This is the biggest hurdle that Madeleine faces in meeting her time frame of next Wednesday. We were surprised a little over a week ago when Madeleine started to struggle with breathing. She has had some problems "de-satting" and has also been intermittently tachypnic (breathing fast). We talked extensively with her doctors and nurses and learned that tachypnea is caused by one of three factors: infection, cardiac troubles, and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (BPD). Madeleine doesn't have an infection and they did an echocardiagram on Tuesday that confirmed no troubles with the heart. Therefore, they confirmed that Madeleine has BPD-- basically, she has premature lungs that need to develop further. They started her a few days ago on nebulizers-- essentially asthma treatments-- and her breathing is steadily improving. She's still on breathing support and will likely come home with some form of oxygen support. The good news is that they believe her BPD is 100% correctable and we're thinking that oxygen support will only be needed for the first few months.

Assuming that Madeleine continues progress on the breathing and meets her feeding goals, our plan is to spend next Monday night in the NICU-- they have a parent's apartment for practice nights. We'll have all of the equipment that we'll be using at home and the nurses will leave us alone unless we request their assistance. We feel pretty confident in treating Madeleine's different issues but its nice to have a practice run at 3AM. Its a little different when you can't think and/or see straight.

In any case, if you're a frequent reader of this blog you know full well about the best laid plans.... We're not getting our hopes up too high (yet) but we'd be lying if we weren't a little excited. Have a great day.

Brent and Kirsten