Today was just “okay” for the Bun.
She had a new nurse that was trying her best to console her and keep up with her demands to be held and talked to! But sometimes when the nurse has 2 other babies to care for, it doesn’t make Ella happy! She wants all the attention. And since the nurse was not able to do that, Ella was frustrated and had some episodes that required increasing her oxygen to settle her down.
So when we arrived in the early afternoon, the nurse was quite happy to be relieved. Ella was immediately better upon seeing familiar faces. Josh and I took turns holding her while she took naps. She was so tired from working so hard all day to fight for attention that she was exhausted!
They are still feeding her 64 ccs of Portagen once every 3 hours. Unfortunately, they have been letting the feeding tube vent all the time again. If you remember, they tried venting for 1 hour afterwards and then decreasing it to 30 minutes after each feeding. When they did this over the past few days, Ella started to retch and experience more discomfort. Instead, they decided to vent the tube all the time for now and try to move towards the other milestones more slowly. They are thinking that maybe Ella’s tummy just needs more time to stretch out.
Other than that, the Bun is doing incredibly well on the nose cannulas. We can’t believe that it has already been 4 days and she has tolerated it! This is definitely the strongest that she has been. We’re so thankful.
Thank you for your continued prayers for Ella and her roommates. Please continue to pray that Ella’s lungs will gain strength. We want to see her continue on the nose cannulas and make progress with her feedings. Par is doing great and just needs to make further progress on his feedings so that he can go home!
Please pray for strength and endurance. It hit us hard today…We are just so tired of the hospital. Plus on top of it, we are really missing the staff in the NICU 3 that we had developed relationships with over the past 20 weeks. That is making the hospital time even harder for us…and Ella too(she is missing all those nurses that got to know her so well)!
Above all else, we praise God for His perfect plan. We submit to Him and trust that He will give us the strength to endure the coming days.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.