Day 1 with Ellie Jo - The Breath of Life

The first day of Ellie's life was marked with lots of visits from family and close friends for both mother and daughter. Mandy and Ben got settled into a room in the birthplace at Stormont Vail. We met Ellie's first doctor and nurse. In the Stormont Vail NIC unit one doctor works a 24 hour shift at a time. Ellie's first doctor was Dr. Hall who explained quite a bit about Ellie's treatment to Ben. Dr. hall was the one who took care of Ellie in the OR immediately after her birth. In the NIC unit Ellie's first project was to start breathing on her own. She started on a ventilator giving her 40 breaths per minute. She could take more breaths than that if she wanted, but no fewer and she was taking over 70 breaths per minute. Good job Ellie. Over the next day and a half they weaned her off of the ventilator by taking the number of breaths they gave her down slowly. Then they removed the intubation tube and instead gave her a nasal cannula. (A tube with prongs for each nostril.) This delivered room air to help her breath through her nose. Meanwhile they watched all of her vital signs closely (which remained excellent). They also watched her nose carefully. While she was in the womb she had been pressed up against mom's pelvis and had some bruising and misshaping on her head. Her nose was also pressed to the side so they observed it to see if it would lead to a deviated septum.