NICU Day 91 ~ (March 7th)

Today was yet another pretty good day overall for Noelle.  She did have another episode with her tummy last night in which her intestines were dilated full of air.  They had to insert a tube down her throat again and draw some of it out; but thankfully, they did not stop her feeds.  We will not know until she grows more, but it is looking more and more like she will have at least a short visit (if not a longer one) at Baptist before she is able to go home.  While there are some other issues that will be dealt with later in her first couple years of life, intestinal issues are not something they want unsolved before she is home with us.  We are still praying that God will work yet another miracle and solve this without surgery; but we also know that if she needs any sort of procedure that Baptist is the best place to be in such a case.  In the meantime, Noelle seems to have regulated out her amounts and is not taking quite so much food as she was the last two days; but she is still eating more than her minimum requirement, so that is great for her growth.  She now weighs 1,020 grams!!  The 1,000 gram mark is quite the milestone in the NICU, and we are very excited for her to reach it, wave goodbye, and keep on going!!  Translated into pounds, this means she weighs 2 lbs. 4 oz., and she is not so very far from tripling her birth weight.

It's difficult to see in this picture, but if you look closely, you can see that Noelle is sitting up inside her isolette.  One of our nurses was kind of enough to take this picture with her phone as I forgot our camera at home today.  I will get a lot more pictures tomorrow of the entire thing, but I'm thankful to have this picture of her first time in her doll seat.  Because she is getting older, she often has wakeful periods in which she likes to interact more and not just lie down in her bed.   However, we cannot keep her out of her isolette for long periods of time because she gets too cold; so the nurses have looked for and tried several different options of bouncy seats which they have in the NICU but all of them were too large to fit inside her isolette.  Tom and I had the thought the other day to check the doll section at the store and came across a little doll high chair that also converted into a swing and a bassinet.  The full thing was still too large to fit, but one of her other nurses figured out to pop the seat portion off (which is soft and adjustable in and of itself) and just use that inside her isolette.  So Noelle had personal playtime today!  She really enjoyed sitting up and looking around at the pictures we taped inside for her to see while listening to stories on her recorder.  It is such a joy to see her "growing up" and doing normal baby things, even while she is still so tiny.  We cannot thank you enough for your continued prayers and look forward to posting more pictures tomorrow!!