july 2- more blood :(

this is wren with one of her beanie babies. thanks gigi and pop!

this morning i got a call at about 4am. wren needed more blood. i was SO thankful that they called to let me know. they expected to only give her a "half-transfusion"... but later that morning she ended up getting the other half. the possible reasons she could need more blood are 1)an internal bleed 2)an infection.

bleed- she doesn't show any of the signs of a head bleed. (her soft spot wouldn't be so soft, and her head circumference would have shot up all of a sudden.) she's getting her 1 month head scan on tuesday anyway... so we'll see. pray for good results! her gut is measuring good, and she doesn't have any show of blood in her stools. (for the amount of blood she's needing, it would be obvious if it were going into her bowels.)

infection- her white cells are just where they should be. and she doesn't seem sick at all.

option 3)they think it just might pass over time. the main doc over the nicu talked to the big doc over the whole ped unit and she said that she's seen one other baby that needed a lot of blood for no apparent reason.

last night they took a blood gas and all of her levels were great! her Co2 was perfect! which means she's actually not doing that bad. she's able to purge her lungs pretty well right now. so we're just hoping she keeps that up.

because she got the blood today they took her off feeds completely. they said that her body has to work pretty hard to oxygenate all that blood and the organs... so trying to digest is a lot of extra work. they put her on clear fluids, then yellow fluids (they have other nutrients in them) with diuretics this afternoon. tomorrow they will resume her feeds where they were. 7.5 over 2 hours, then an hour break.

the doc said that she has no doubt that at this point wren would have had a "gut issue" if she hadn't had breast milk. that if she had been on formula she would have developed a problem. (probably nec) it's encouraging to hear... that i'm making a difference in her care. (maybe that's why the doctor said it. :)

we're really happy with our nurses we had today... and they were SUPER supportive of us. one of them actually had twins in the nicu previously... she really made us feel comfortable with having our opinions and wanting to be notified. (as did the doctor. she said that when it's all done, she'll look at her assessment, but also ask us what we think, because we see her day to day, everyday, over the entire time wren's there.. and that gives us a perspective that none of them can have.)

overall, good news today. we're just waiting to see what tomorrow brings...



wren was getting weighed- so they took the cpap headgear off. she weighed in at a whopping 2lbs 10oz! (but she did get a lot of blood today..) her face is a little messed up from the mask she had on... she got switched to the prongs right after this. (which give her the bat face.)



thadd got to flip her after we were done with her care time. it's harder than it looks!