Ella had a great night. She had such a good blood gas at 8pm, that they weened the vent down to 6 breaths per minute and 40% oxygen! This is the lowest vent settings that Dr. Kays ordered.

One of the nearby CDH babies was having his repair surgery last night. This led us to see Dr. Kays in the NICU.

He was pleasantly surprised by her progress and pondered the idea of extubation. Then, he asked if we had seen her chest x-ray from the morning. We hadn’t and neither had he, so we followed him to take a look.

Unfortunately, it was fairly hazy. I asked if this could be fluid build-up again. He mentioned that he cannot tell with the x-ray, although it was not as good as some of the prior ones.

With this information, he decided to wait until Monday and re-assess.

She did have another good blood gas at 8am this morning, ph=7.38, cO2=47, pO2=62. There is nothing to ween on the vent, so we hope the next couple days will just mean that she can get stronger.

He did warn us that even if he tries to extubate, that some babies do not tolerate it well initially and end up being placed back on the vent. But since there is no more vent settings to ween at this point, it is something that we will need to try.

Her weight has remained constant at 8 lbs, 1 ounce. Currently, she is sleeping soundly with saturations at 100/100.

If Ella can maintain her good blood gases throughout the weekend, he may try extubating her early next week.

Please pray for stable stats this weekend and a clear chest x-ray for Monday.