Zoe is 41 days old today.  It's hard to believe it has been that long.  Some days it seems like it has flown by and other days seem like a lifetime ago.  When I got to the NICU this morning the doctors had just taken Zoe off the ventilator and had placed her on C-PAP and she was doing great.   The difference between the ventilator and the C-PAP is that the ventilator force Zoe to take  breath and keeps her lungs semi inflated and with the CPAP Zoe has initiate all the breaths on her own. It will keep a small amount of air in the lungs when she exhales so that getting them re-inflated isn't quite as much work, but other than that it is up to her,  it does also provide oxygen through a nasal canula, there is no longer a tube that goes to her lungs with oxygen.  It can be 24-48 hours sometimes before babies can start having some issues with the CPAP and sometimes may need to go back on the ventilator, but for now all is good.  They didn't even have to go up on her oxygen level and her gas levels before and after CPAP are identical which is a really great sign that her lungs aren't having to overwork and are keeping her carbon dioxide levels where they should be. 

She was a bit fussy today probably because of the inconvenience of the CPAP setup, her raspy vocal chords and the fact that they weened her Adavan (an anxiety medication) Once they put her Adavan dose back where it was in the morning she was fine and went right back to sleep.  She was able to cry vocally quite a bit today and already by the end of the day had gotten much louder than she was in the morning.  Her stats are fantastic and show that she isn't having to work to hard to breathe like she was the other day.  Even when she was being fussy, it didn't make her breathe harder, you could tell it was just irritation. 

Micah and Becca stopped by today for a bit and got to hear Zoe  cry, but other than that it was a nice quiet day for the two of us since Jason is back up in Seattle.  It's just great to see Zoe move on to the different stages of her recovery,  it all seems easier than the last thing.