The past two days...

It's been a rough past few days for 3 of the 5 Minneapolis Robinsons:

Caddie, of course is fine. She gets walks around the neighborhood with Mommy and Daddy regularly and has no idea anything is amiss.

Cooper is in "calm land" according to the doctors and nurses. He's on the high flow nasal cannula, and is being weened down on the pressure he's receiving. He's growing and getting stronger right before our eyes. He's also becoming a little ladies man :-). Although he can't really "see" a whole lot at this stage, his eyes are bright, and when he's not sleeping, wide open, and he loves to try to follow who is in, and what is going on in his room. Apparently all the evening and overnight nurses like to peek into his room just to look at him. He's also charming his Mommy and Daddy with every passing day.

Eloise, Mommy and Daddy on the other hand have been not quite as calm and relaxed as the other two. Ella has had a rough two days. She's been dealing with a PDA, or a patent ductus arteriosus, that's been causing a heart murmur for the last week or so. Yesterday she started showing signs that she was having more difficulty breathing and oxygenating her blood, her murmur was getting louder, and the doctors could hear some fluid in her lungs. They started treating the PDA with medication, but it was unclear whether that was working, as she was still unstable. The doctors put her back on the ventilator last evening to give her a break from working so hard to breathe, in hopes that she could start healing herself. The doctors also drew some blood to see if an infection, such as pneumonia, was causing her backward steps. This morning Ella had an Echo to see if the medication was helping to close the PDA. The results of that were positive, the PDA is small, and doesn't appear to be causing her problem. The 24 hour blood culture results also came back this evening and are so far showing no signs of infection. The doctor has tentatively diagnosed her as "being a premie" and will hopefully be back chasing after her brother in a couple of days. Although the last 24 hours or so have been rough, we believe Ella is starting to "turn the corner" as her nurse said when we were leaving tonight. She's starting to get better oxygen flowing through her blood, and although she's still not tolerating stress well, she's able to bounce back more quickly. It'll probably take a few days for her to get back to where she was, but we're hopeful that she'll get there.

As is probably obvious, Jeff and I have been stressed and overwhelmed, and we've spent a lot of time down at the hospital. We're pretty certain our stress levels will mirror what Ella's stats do, so we're hopeful that as she gets better and stronger, we'll calm down too.