29 Weeks

Its funny how we keep track of Veronica's age not only in terms of her days since birth, but her gestational age as well.  Both seem equally as important at this point.  And from what I hear, her gestational age will be more what we focus on over the next few years of her life - especially since she will be nearly 16 weeks behind other babies born around the same time.  There are so many unknowns in terms of how she will develop - but we are hopeful that she will continue to progess and grow as she is doing now.

Veronica continues to breath with the assistance of CPAP but they are weaning her settings slowly and she has been tolerating the changes well.  We are expecting her to transistion to the bubble CPAP any day now.  She will have to do all of the breathing on her own but the bubble CPAP will also allow her to grow lung tissue which will help her in the long run.  As I understand it, this is not something that is possible when babies are breathing with mechanical support.  Once on the bubble CPAP, she will likely remain on it for several more weeks and then transition to room air.  This was encouraging to hear.  From much of my research and connecting with other parents of micopreemies, I was expecting that she would be discharged with some form of oxygen support.  But apparently it is very rare for babies discharged from the GW NICU to go home on oxygen.  Just one more reason we are so satisfied with the GW NICU.  I can't imagine how much more difficult this whole journey would be if we were not confident in the care she is receiving. 

We're hoping that in the upcoming days and weeks we will not have too much to report.  The progess is slow but clearly going in the right direction. As one of my Facebook friends put it, slow and steady.....