Day 6

To our surprise today, when we walked into Emma's room we saw a new ventialtor! They were going to try to wean her off of the oscillator to see if she was able to hadle breathing on her own. With all of the excitment, I think that we lost sight of how small she was! After about 3 hours on a conventional ventilator (the same one she was on during Day 1) she was right back to the oscillator. She was still getting the little drops of breast milk every 12 hours and Eric's blood came in today so she would be getting that along with more platelets later too. They discontinued her Dopamine this morning becuase she was doing well on such a little dosage, so they would be watching to make sure she was still going enough overnight. Her white blood cell level came back lower today, even after the medicine. Dr. Roa wants Emma's white blood cell count to be around 6,000; today her level was 500, so he was very concerned. He explained that with all of her blood cell levels being so low, it could be that her bone marrow was so imature, it is not able to produce the cells itself. This was not a good thing and with the look on the doctor's face, it seemed to be very serious. He wasn't sure if her body wasn't making the cells or if it was destroying them. To top off the day of not so great news, Emma stopped peeing tonight. Her weight was up to 495 grams, but none of it was real weight, it was all retained fluid. Another day has passed and she is still with us, so that is what Eric and I are taking with us to bed tonight.