Lilian Leading The Way

Now, we were told early on that we shouldn't compare Lilian and Jacob to each other as despite being twins, they are separate babies (also because boys usually don't do as well as girls, particularly in a pre-term situation) it wouldn't be fair to look at them in this way. However, the Doctor's have encouraged some healthy competition / leading the way between the two (and for the large part the twins seem happy to comply!).

Lilian is being an absolute superstar and is practically behaving in a textbook 'best scenario' way; she is tolerating her whopping 180ml-a-day feeds at 2-hourly intervals and is well on course to start her 3-hourly feeds, which the Doctor's hope to start in the next couple of days. She has gained weight (62g to be precise - taking her up to 1036g overall), which is making her stronger and ready for the next challenge! She has been tolerating flat CPAP so well that in the next week or so they are looking to take her off CPAP completely, she will then just have a supply of oxygen!

Jacob on the other hand has had a bit of a setback over the past couple of days. He was de-saturating quite frequently (his blood saturation levels were dropping) on Saturday evening and as a result the Doctor's took some blood gases; the results of which were quite bad so they decided to put him back on full CPAP (which we now know is called BiPhasic CPAP! or BiPAP for short) and give him suction to clear out his throat. Judging by how well he did on the BiPAP after the suction it was believed that he must have just had some secretions stuck which was causing him difficulty. To be sure, an x-ray was carried out which was clear. Though it was decided that he would stay on BiPAP on Sunday and again today so as not to keep chopping and changing what is happening with him.

Jacob has unfortunately also lost weight, which he should not be doing at this point so it was decided that he would have his food intake increased, but due to his stoma losses being so high, he couldn't have increased milk feeds. It was then decided that they would have to reduce his milk feeds to 100ml a day and give him 80ml a day of TPN (food made especially for them that goes into their body through a long-line). So we're hoping this enables him to put on weight so that he can get stronger.

This set back for Jacob is very frustrating and we hope that our little man can get back on track after doing so well to this point, and catch up to his little sister.

Oh and in case you were wondering, we managed to get a family photo over the weekend! Which we are chuffed to bits about - we're not posting it on here though for privacy reasons.