NICU Day 41 (January 17th)

Thankfully, there really is nothing new to report today.  The doctors are still working on switching her medications over so that we can get rid of the PICC line soon.  It will still be a few days as they will wait to see how she tolerates everything with the switch and then take the pic line out.  We are really looking forward to that--it means that much less that is attached to her and makes her much easier to hold!!  The same discussion is still going on as far as her ventilator as well so I imagine we will be seeing something happening with that by the end of this week.  She had an eye exam today which was good.  It showed that her eyes are immature as of yet, but that is to be expected since she is still so small.  Preemies eyes are prone to a lot of different things including blindness, so we are just thankful that she is doing well so far.  She did have testing done that showed early signs of Rickets due to the lack of nutrition when she was off her feeds for so long (they supplement what they can in the IV fluid but it doesn't always cut it).  They are giving her a supplement to help with this and hopefully counteract any further progression and reverse the level that she already has.  I believe we forgot to report that all of her blood work which they were testing genetically came back completely normal--no chromosomal issues at all.  It doesn't rule out all syndromes, but at this point it looks as if she was just extremely small.  We may have some answers for that as well as we just got the pathology report back on the placenta.  The doctors have ordered some blood work for me to determine if I have a blood disorder (I already have one), and this may have caused the issues with the placenta and thus the small growth for her.  We are praying that they get some answers from this as it could really help us avoid issues like this in future pregnancies.  Another prayer request is that it seems I am trying to fight a cold.  It is not full blown yet but seemed to get a little worse this afternoon and so I stayed home from the hospital tonight.  It's tough to stay away but it's the best thing I can do for her right now.  A cold or flu virus in her fragile body could turn all of these good days in the exact opposite direction so we are earnestly praying that she stays healthy during this time and doing our best not to expose her in any way.  We're so thankful to God for each day of life He has given to Noelle and especially grateful for this past week of good days.  We pray that it continues in that direction and that we can report another good day again tomorrow.

***Huge Praise: the cold turned out to be only allergies!***