27th-29th August

A hectic few days for the Chaffins, hence the slight lack of posts.

Things in general are progressing in the right direction, but Miss Chaffin has been a bit of little monkey over the last few days! The staff at Stoke Mandeville have now been trained on Vapotherm, so she is back on that rather than the CPAP, which means that the Star Wars mask is no more! Having said that, she seems to be on a much higher oxygen concentration than when she was at the Radcliffe. She is on around 30% when she is on her front and around 40% when she is on her back. The nurses have started to put her on her back now - although she hates it she needs to start getting used to it as she will need to go on her back when she finally comes home.

Her breathing had become a bit laboured earlier on in the week, so we have been through the usual blood tests, cultures and starting antibiotics in case she has an infection. She is still on the antibiotics and the cultures aren't back yet. It is either that, or she is refluxing some of her feed. We will wait until the cultures come back and then if it is not an infection then some of the anti-reflux medications will be re-started. Feeds have now moved to 3 hourly, again to try and start getting her used to what will happen at home.

Weight is still moving in the right direction as this morning she weighed 1295g (2lbs and 13 oz) - we have noticed that she is also starting to get a little bit of a double chin which is really quite sweet!

The other big news is that because she is now really sucking at her dummy the nurses recommended to try her at the breast when they are giving her the feed down the tube, so that she starts to associate getting milk with being on me. It was very sweet as although she didn't actively feed from me, she did have a bit of a go and with time the nurses think she will get there. Pretty good really given that apparently babies don't develop the suckling reflex normally until 34 weeks and she will be 32 weeks on Monday.