Kylee - Day 3

Today is Kylee's third day of life and she is continuing to improve under the watchful eyes of her team at Texas Children's Hospital.  The major hurdle she needed to overcome immediately after birth was her breathing.  Kylee was placed on a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine immediately after delivery to assist her breathing.

Kylee was born at a gestational age of 32 weeks and babies born at this time generally suffer from respiratory difficulty as this bodily system is one of the last to form.  Kylee's breathing has been improving day by day and this improvement is actually quantifiable.  Oxygen is pumped into the CPAP machine and mixed with regular air.  A sensor measures the oxygen saturation levels in Kylee's blood and measures them in percentages.  A normal person's oxygen saturation levels are very high (<95%) when breathing room air.  The air we breathe contains 21% oxygen.

I have told you all of this in order to explain how Kylee's respiratory progress is being measured and how simple it is to understand.  When Kylee was first admitted into the hospital, the "air" she was breathing contained 35-40% oxygen and her saturation levels were in the upper 80's with periods in the lower 90's.  During the course of the past few days, her oxygen requirement has decreased to 21% (room air) and her saturation levels are maintaining steady in the lower to mid 90's.

The doctors feel that Kylee's respiratory problems are caused by some of the medication that Natalie was on in the hospital.  Natalie was given magnesium sulfate to keep her blood pressure from getting too high.  The magnesium sulfate is pretty powerful stuff and caused Natalie to be pretty loopy, drowsy, lethargic, etc.  She was actually pretty entertaining at times with the things she would say and we did have the same conversations two.....or three times.....hahaha.  Obviously, with the magnesium sulfate being pumped directly into Natalie's blood stream, Kylee would experience the effects of it too.  Kylee was affectionately referred to as a "mag baby" due to the medication and this was blamed for the respiratory difficulty.  The doctors stated that it would take several days for the medication to be eliminated from her system and that we should see improvement during that time.  We have definitely seen improvement and are taking things one day at a time.