NICU Day 121 ~ (April 18th)

~Can you see what is missing?!!!~

Noelle made huge strides today and even set some new milestones in her little life.  She did so well through yesterday and last night that they decided to remove the replogle tube and allow her to begin eating again, which she thoroughly enjoyed.  Of course she does not understand why she has not been allowed to eat, and so she holds the bottle in her mouth as if you will never ever feed her again!!  The term in the NICU for not being allowed to eat is "N-P-O" {which is an abbreviation for a latin term}, and so the standing joke is that she will probably always greatly dislike those letters for some "odd" reason. She has lost some weight, which is typical of going through surgery and not eating for a few days; but she is already eating like a champ and should be back up to that 4 lb. mark in no time.  The surgeon was also able to perform her {quite painless} biopsy for Hirschsprung disease so we should have some results back in a couple of weeks.   However, the best part of today and the biggest answer to prayer is that Noelle has come off her oxygen support entirely and is breathing room air!!  Overnight they had been able to wean her down to the levels on which she had been while at home {which was an extremely low flow}; so today they decided to do a trial run on room air and see how she did.  We began the trial at 11:30a.m., and she is still going strong and doing extremely well.  Her cannula came out a few hours after that, so she is one happy girl with nearly everything gone from her face; and we are thoroughly enjoying looking at her tiny face with nothing sticking to it!!  She still has an IV heplock in her head which they will remove once they are certain she is tolerating her feeds well and no longer in need of any fluids, which should be within the next 24 hours.  Tomorrow will be the day we find out if she is coming home in the afternoon or if they are keeping her one more night for observation.  Either decision is fine with us at this point, but we are getting very excited to have her home with us again.  We have missed having her here {well, the few hours we are here each night anyway!} and are looking forward to settling into what we hope will be a semi-normal lifestyle for a while.  Thank you so much for continuing to pray for her.  I really do not think we would be where we are today without the prayers of so many faithful believers.  God has been amazing in how He has moved so many to lift our precious little girl up in prayer to Him, and we are ever grateful for how He has used such a vast multitude of people in the life of our little family.  Thank you for sharing in our extreme joy tonight, and we very soon look forward to reporting another sweet home coming day.