Day 5

Today when we got up, the nurse asked when I wanted to be discharged. I told her that the afternoon would be fine. She told me that we would be able to stay in our room too and that the unit didn't look like it was filling up, there were plenty of extra rooms. Eric and I got up and headed over to the NICU. We were pleased to see that she had a good night. Her blood gases were even good enough that they decreased her oscillator to 38% O2 and an amplitude of 21! Because her white blood cell count was low this morning, she is going to get two different drugs called IVIG and Neupogen. These will hopefully help her with building an immune system. They were able to decrease her Dopamine by half today, so that is a big plus. She was also scheduled for an echocardiogram this morning to see if she has a PDA or not, and to our surprise she did not. The ductus arteriosis was closed...this meant no surgery so far! The excitement continued when they told us that they were going to give her a little breast milk to try to stilmulate her bowels. They were giving her 1 ml every 12 hours and would move up little by little if she could tolerate it. Eric left this afternoon to donate blood and so my family was in to keep me and Emma company. We thought that she still looked rather puffy from retaining water, and her weight showed it with a gain of 25 grams. She is now topping the scales at 480 grams (1 pound 1 ounce).