More Updates & 2nd Surgery Scheduled

They are experimenting with weaning down Aubree's vent settings, but with a few more changes from yesterday morning's change since it wasn't successful. Yesterday, they increased her pressure and lowered her volume a bit, along with the same reduction of breathing rate from 30 to 25 breaths per minute. This change with the increased pressure support Aubree tolerated great. She tolerated this well and her blood gases looked good, so they reduced the rate down to 20 breaths per minute. We are much happier with this weaning approach that was first tried of just her rate decrease. This morning, they slightly decreased her tidal volume by one, but got really agitated after she was repositioned and was clamping down on breathing tube and not breathing. This skyrocketed her co2 levels and her o2 saturation dropped. She was struggling majorly with lots of nasal flaring and almost lofting her head up when trying to breate. Even with a rescue sedation med, she was not improving. The team of docs came by and decided to reduce her rate to 7 breaths per minute, but increased her pressure support substantially to 20 (pressure when inhaling) and her peep (pressure to 7 when exhaling to keep the pockets in her lungs slightly open like they should be). This means she is doing most of the work taking breaths, just with lots of pressure support to make sure they are good, deep breaths. Please pray for Aubree to tolerate these vent changes well and that she will breathe even more on her own. Please start praying now for when she is extubated (the breathing tube and vent support removed), that it will be at the right time with the right support she needs as she steps down from the vent , and that her body will be healed and strong enough to start doing even more of the respiratory work on its own.

With the end goal of extubation and starting to work towards that with vent settings, they also have to start weaning down her strong pain and sedation meds since they slow down respiratory drive. Aubree has already had to have a few sedation rescues today as these meds have been reduced. They have also slightly increased a pain/sedation combo that doesn't decrease respiratory drive, but it it is kind like when she was out of surgery all over again in that they kind of have to play with it and see how she responds to get the right dosage. So very hard to watch your baby in pain and struggling as they work this out. Please pray for this to be worked out quickly to keep our girl comfy and happy!

She started spiking a fever again (over 100) with her heart rate and respiratory rate climbing, but last night's nurse was very on board to go ahead a give her tylenol to stop the fever in its tracks so it didn't get so severe like last night. Aubree rested comfortably with a temp of 97.5 (her normal) with her normal resting heart rates and respiratory rates. She is also sooo much pinker after her blood transfusion and her hemoglobin is back up. She is also tolerating the ipv percussion type sessions well. So many answers to prayer!

Today, they started half amounts of her normal feedings, instead of pedialyte and pedialyte diluted feeds. Pray for her to tolerate these feeds and for her little system to get back to normal since anesthesia, pain meds, and sedation meds slow all that down considerably. going to give her some increased miralax to hopefully help with that.

Also, Aubree has been opening her eyes more for very short periods of time. She even reached for my phone when I was showing her one of her favorite videos of her and daddy laughing together. Another time, she started kicking her foot up at me and playing in a way we play at home. Our sweet girl is still in there!

Also, we got a date for Aubree's second implantation surgery. It will be April 9th, with Aubree admitted probably a couple days before for pre-op stuff. Never too early to start praying for this upcoming surgery as well!

Thank you all so much for praying for us and especially Aubree through this time. We have so much peace and comfort throughout this process and thank you for praying for this for us! Also, sorry for all the overload on medical jargon and vitals. I am trying to keep up with it all to hopefully make the post op experience easier on her the second time around!

Just so this post has pictures, below are some pictures of Aubree from Halloween, which she spent at Arkansas Children's Hospital for respiratory observation. She was the cutest honeybee ever! I said she was a honeybee instead of a bumble bee because she is so sweet!