Praise God – Ella’s chest xray was much improved this morning and her labs from later in the day checked out well.

The convert of the lasix to IV seems to have worked. Ella was on 1 liter of oxygen until about 6:45pm when Dr. Kays came to check on her and decided to wean it to 750ml. If she can continue to improve over the next 24 hours, he will look to wean it down to 500ml.

Her feedings of Portagen (30 calories per ounce) at 120ml/k/day continue. They are infusing feeds over 1 hour, 5 times per day and continuous g-tube feeds for 8 hours at night. Venting the g-tube is still at 10 minutes prior to feed and 30 minutes after the feed. If she can continue to improve over the next 48 hours, Dr. Kays talked about a slow introduction of breast milk with the Portagen. This would be really good for Ella to get the nutrients, so we hope that her body can tolerate the breast milk (in the past, it caused issues with fluid accumulation around her lungs).

Most of the day, Bun was sleeping. For whatever reason, she seemed tired. But it was still nice to spend my day bedside and rock her while she was resting. And of course, the awake times where I caught a grin or two made all my worries seem like nothing.

By the time I reached the NICU, Par had left for home in Birmingham. Ella misses him already, but he will be back in 6-8 weeks to see Dr. Kays for a visit. We look forward to that time.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers for our girl. She continues to take small baby steps in the right direction. And of course, each day she is a clear reminder of how we always need to look to Him for our needs.

Philippians 4:19
And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.