Growing Up

Yesterday marked 32 gestational weeks and this last week has been a wondrous week of progress for each one of the babies.

All babies are now over 1kg, even Cienna, the littlest. The other three are over 3 pounds!

Thomas: 3 lb, 8 oz
Gracie: 3 lb, 3 oz
Cienna: 2 lb, 12 oz
William: 3 lb, 7 oz

All babies are currently on momma's milk only! In addition their PICC lines have been removed. They have also been growing. Here are their lengths at birth followed by their current length:

T: 14 inches, now 15.75
G: 13 inches, now 15.75
C: 11.75 inches, now 14.6
W:  13.25 inches, now 15.35

Most exciting is that Gracie and Thomas have been off the ventilator for about a week now! In fact, Gracie is on just 1 liter of oxygen from the wall. Cienna is still working on getting off the ventilator. Today they started her on a 5 day course of steroids (dexamethazone). On day three (tomorrow) they will try to take her off of the ventilator to see how she does. William is also getting weaned off his ventilator little by little as they lower the settings allowing him do more breathing on his own.

On Friday they each had an eye exam to check for Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROM, click here to read more about it). They are at high risk for this simply because of being born so young. So far the report is good but they will continue to monitor for this for a few more weeks. From my understanding, if a baby develops ROM it is quite treatable.

They also had their third brain ultrasound in which the doctors look for hemorrhaging. Again, a good report. Everyone is in the clear so far and they will not have another one until they are discharged. Speaking of discharge, one of the doctors thought that within 3 to 4 weeks the babies would be ready to go to a step down unit and possibly be ready to be transported back to Washington!

Here they are this week, wearing hats that were given to them by volunteers: