Monday 15th November

Wow - if only all morning status reports could be that good. Willow is doing really well, breathing normal air through her CPAP machine, just requiring a bit of extra pressure to keep her lungs open. Normal air is only 21% oxygen - so this is amazing considering this time last week, she was requiring anything up to 100%. She's been having really good blood gases - where they check the PH, carbon dioxide, oxygen levels etc - which means her heart and lungs are efficiently doing what they should be doing.

At this rate she'll be catching up with Stanley in no time, who is still getting along smoothly on his nasal prongs. He is having the odd episode, where he stops breathing for a couple of minutes and needs a bit of a push, but hopefully the blood transfusion he had last night should help that. These babies are still not quite capable of regenerating their own new blood just yet, so they need a bit of a boost occasionally.

This afternoon, while I was at work, Leela called me from the hospital. I knew it would only be very good news or very bad news.....

....... and it was very good news again! Amazing news, in fact. Willow was now breathing without the CPAP machine, needing just a bit of oxygen via nasal prongs. So it seems she has already almost caught up with her brother. She'll be back on the CPAP mask overnight, but this is unbelievable progress. Those steroids obviously did the trick.

More of the same to come, please, children!