Vivienne's CDH Story: Day 31: Focusing on Feeds

Vivienne had another wonderful day! She is officially off of the high flow cannulas and is doing well on the standard cannulas with a flow of 2 liters. The goal is to wean her to 1 liter and off of all oxygen support (she was at 22% when we left - room air has 21% oxygen, so she's very close). Viv also had a follow-up echocardiogram today. Everything looks great and her pulmonary hypertension has been greatly reduced. In addition, her sedation has been stopped using the pump and will now be administered orally via her feeding tube. This means her PICC line can come out soon (possibly tomorrow). The PICC has been very useful/necessary to administer drugs, nutrition, etc., but it also increases her risk of infection, so it's good to remove it as soon as it's feasible.

Our main focus today was on feeding. Oral feeds are possible now that Viv is on the standard cannulas, so we did some non-nutritive breastfeeding (which is more of an introduction than an actual feed). We also attempted to feed via bottle which went pretty well. Viv doesn't know how to suck, swallow, and breathe because she's never had to do it for food up to this point. Basically she has to reconnect with her natural instincts since her first month of life has been anything but natural. She ended up taking 10ml of milk via the bottle without incident. We'll continue to attempt to breast and bottle feed until she can hopefully transition off of the feeding tube for good.