Growing Like A Weed

Yesterday morning Eloise weighted in at 4lbs 2ozs and this morning she was at 4lbs 4ozs. The doctor was very impressed with her growth and said that they could cut back on her supplements. They were adding supplemented formula to her breast milk to give her extra calories. She has been doing better with her feedings but they are still having to tube feed some of them. They also decided to stop her caffeine today and see how she does. To recap the caffeine was being given to help stimulate her brain so that she would not have any apnea's (stop breathing) or bradycardia's (slowed heart beat). They will monitor her for 5 days and if she does not have any A's or B's, as they call them, then when she goes home she will not have to be on a monitor. If she does regress without the caffeine it does not mean she will not be allowed to go home just that she would be sent home with a monitor and on caffeine. We also received the final report on her ultrasound and the radiologist did see a small cyst. He could not confirm it was an ovarian cyst but the neonatologist said that from what she knew of Eloise that she would say it was an ovarian cyst and it sounds like is was smaller than was seen in previous ultrasounds. We will have to follow up with our pediatrician once she is released from the NICU. The doctor did not feel there was any reason for concern and said it will most likely just resolve itself on its own.

Trey and I continue on our same schedule of visiting. Trey goes up in the morning for the doctors report, I go up from 2-4ish while Cecelia sleeps and then typically one of us goes up for the 9pm feeding. We anticipate that Eloise could possible come home sometime next week but that is just our speculations. There has not been any talk of her coming home from the staff and as they told Trey last night she is not even on a long term discharge plan yet. Right now the only thing holding her back from coming home is her lack of continuous eating. This is mostly due to her being small and premature still and not having the stamina to eat all the time. Our prayer is that as she gets bigger she will eat for longer periods and be able to come home soon.

The hat she is wearing is from Cecelia's doll and it is still a little big.