"I can see clearly now...."

Looks like Miss Anna passed her second eye exam with flying colours! We won't know the results yet for sure until tomorrow but apparently the eye doctor mentioned to the nurse that he won't have to see Anna until another two weeks pass by. The nurse then told us that this is a good sign, since usually if there is something awry then he would have to see her again within only one week. Anyways, she did wonderfully, they gave her some sucrose for the procedure (which calms babies down so they don't feel much pain). She didn't even have one spell or desat during the procedure. It's not a terribly "gross" procedure; the doctor just basically opens up Anna's eyes and looks in them with some sort of a magnifying device so he can look behind the retina for any abnormalities. It's more just an uncomfortable thing for the babies since their eyes have to be kept open for a few minutes.

She had some nice Kangaroo time with Daddy afterward which I think really helped to also calm her down. She relaxed and fell asleep in his arms almost right away which made the eye exam just become a distant memory for her.

We also, maybe....maaaybe might have some movement on the breathing "front" soon. The nurse mentioned that they were going to try weaning Anna to 8 hours off the si-pap but since she had to have the eye exam, they didn't want to push her. So instead, she will see if she can stay off si-pap on her next try which will be from 12am-8am this morning if all goes well. Today is day 8 of her being on the 6 hour cycles so I hope that she is able to tack on an additional 4 hours per day to her breathing. If she does then we anticipate that it won't be long until she will be breathing on her own fully. If she can't make the 8 hour span, then the little girl just needs some more time to grow.

Speaking of growing, she gained a nice chunk of weight last night! She was up to 1527 grams, but tonight when she was weighed she lost a little bit and is now 1516 grams (3lbs 5oz). Which is still great, it's an increase of 70 grams in the last 3 days! The nurse mentioned that it's not really how much they gain each day per se, but more about how much they gain every week in total. Somewhere around 150-300 grams per week is considered a good range for growth. And growing she is!! :) She is also up to 22 mls of milk every 2 hours!

So we'll update the blog as soon as we know anything tomorrow with her progress. Let's hope she will do okay, I know our little Anna is doing her best!

Here she is being put back into her isolette tonight. You can tell she has grown so much already in the past week or so:



Marta & Arthur