Lilah had a bit of a rough night with her apnea. Babies at this age sometimes work so hard at breathing, or aren't used to having to breathe, and they sometimes forget to do it. Their heart rate slows, their oxygen levels drop and they need to remember to start breathing again in order to turn it all back around. Both girls have apnea, and they usually start breathing again in about 20-30 seconds, but if they don't, the staff just needs to pat their foot or back or belly and it will stimulate the baby to breathe again. Lilah had several of these apnea moments last night but the patting and rubbing didn't work right away so the nurses had to "bag her" until she started back up again.
The recommendation they've been holding off on was finally solidified - Lilah needed to be intubated and given surfactant. This means that she had a tube put down into her lungs and the surfactant administered directly through the tube. This is normally done within the first 48 hours of life, if at all, otherwise it might not absorb into the lungs all the way and it is too late to do any good. Then, once the intubation happens, the baby is typically pretty stressed out and fighting it so much that she needs even more help temporarily breathing, so they attach the tube to a ventilator. Eventually, if it all works as desired, the surfactant is absorbed quickly, the lung function improves dramatically, and the baby is taken off the ventilator.
Everything went perfectly with Lilah! In fact, about two hours later the ventilator was only using room air and not supplementing with any additional oxygen. And a few hours after that, she was moved off the vent and back onto CPAP and is once again only using room air and nothing more!
Both girls have blood levels that show they have jaundice, so they are both under special lights (bilirubin lights) for a few days that help them overcome the jaundice. They have to wear small "blinders" to protect their eyes from the lights, so there is unfortunately one more thing covering their cute little faces.
Both girls are also being fed 2 mL of breast milk every 4 hours through a feeding tube, which is an excellent step!
But, like I keep saying, this is all completely expected and just a little bit of time will show that the girls have completely recovered and are ready to go home!
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