Update on Faith and Makaila 8

The last few days have been very encouraging! Faith and Makaila have improved considerably over the past week. It appears that both of their infections are almost gone or gone altogether. During the time they were sick, neither Faith nor Makaila were able to take any of their breast milk feeds. Now, however, Faith is up to 4 mls of breast milk every 2 hours and Makaila is up to 9 mls every 2 hours. They are receiving these feeds well which means the amount they receive will be increased on a regular basis. When Makaila gets to 13 mls and Faith gets to 11 mls they will be able to come off of their IV lines. Makaila is obviously closer but it will still be several days for her and probably even more for Faith before this will happen. Both girls are now on the conventional ventilator (Faith was on the oscillator in my last update) and are doing well. Their oxygen saturation levels are good, so they are not relying too heavily on the machines.

While things look positive, Faith and Makaila still have a long road ahead. The key is for them to not get sick again so they can just focus on putting on weight and growing. Faith and Makaila have both put on roughly a hundred grams each but are still bellow the one kilo mark (Faith is around 800 grams and Makaila is around 900 grams). Faith's level one hemorrhage in her brain has not increased which means it is still not a concern. If they can make it to 30 weeks (gestational time) without any significant setbacks and they keep putting on weight, then their odds for survival will be very good (we recently found out that when they were born, their odds of survival where anywhere from 30% to 60%). On November 21st they turned 28 weeks so that's two weeks to go!

Please continue to pray for the protection of their health and that they would keep putting on weight and developing those little lungs (we want them on CPAP soon!). Thank you for all of your support and prayers!

Blessings,

Graham