15th August

Briony didn't have a very good night on Friday/Saturday night.

She was struggling to breathe and her respiration rate was very high, so they have had to up her breathing support again. She is now on 6 litres of vapotherm and 24-30% oxygen. They are very concerned about an infection, so have taken some blood cultures which will take a couple of days before the results are known. In the meantime they have started her on IV anti-biotics in case there is an infection.

Mummy and Daddy had quite a long chat with the doctors. The medical staff feel that what we are seeing is premature lung disease and is expected. They said that they felt that Briony had been doing a little too well given the circumstances under which she was born and that now she is pretty much doing what they would expect. Her lungs are very immature and should have had another 3 months to develop and are pretty much the last thing to develop in babies. They think that the drugs they gave both me and her at birth and also the hormones in her body from the premature birth may have been masking the true picture up until now. They have done a chest xray which shows that she has very under-developed lungs. This will be something that they hope she will eventually grow out of, but at the moment, nothing is certain.

On the positive side, Briony did manage to put on some weight and is 968g, so the switch to 1/4 formula and 3/4 breast milk does seem to be making a difference. She has however been having more problems with reflux despite the medicines to try and control it, so they have switched her back to continuous feeds, rather than 2 hourly. The volume has increased very slightly to 7.5mls/hour.