Are we there yet?

We know the babies are growing and are making progress and we want to know, are we there yet? Just like the answer we hope to give the kids several times during a family road trip, no we're not there yet but we're getting closer. Clara and Wilson are now 35 weeks gestationally which leaves us with another five weeks in the NICU if they come home around their expected due date of September 22nd. We think Wilson will come home before then but he still has to master taking all his feeding through a bottle or breast. 

Unfortunately, we don't have any timetable on when Clara will be home and our sweet baby girl is struggling again with her breathing. She is still at 2 liters of oxygen but is closer to the 30%- 40% range than the 20% - 30% range. Her oxygen levels started creeping up earlier this week which made the doctors nervous. They debated putting her on chronic diuretics, but decided to give her another round of Lasix (a diuretic to rid her lungs of excess fluid). The hope is Clara will not need additional oxygen and the Lasix will allow her to maintain status quo until she outgrows the need for all this oxygen. The reason the oxygen flow and percentage is so important is because if she is working extra hard to breathe then she is burning extra calories. When she burns too many calories she does not grow; when she doesn't grow, she doesn't produce new lung and she will never grow out of chronic lung disease. We want to end this vicious cycle so we can get her healthy and bring her home! Other than struggling with her oxygen, Clara is doing well. She is now an unbelievable four pounds and one ounce!

Wilson is contemplating entering the Annual Nathan's Hot Dog competitive eating contest. Something happened Friday and Wilson decided he had enough of his feeding tube and mastered the art of breast feeding at noon and took an entire bottle of milk at 6pm. We are pretty sure this comes from the Danner side of the family - the Danner's do love to eat. Then again, Morgan eats like he has a tapeworm. Either way, Wilson comes by it honestly.

Here are two of our favorite pictures of Clara and Wilson from this week.

I love being held!

yummmm....Hot Dogs!

With smiles like that, we want them home. So it looks like we're turning into the annoying people in the backseat continually asking the doctors "are we there yet?"