Big Ups

Much positive progress today for little Ella.

Mommy got to hold her for the first time, which was a big treat - both mommy and Ella will sleep better tonight...

This was possible because Ella's blood pressure has stabilized, and she has been taken off of all of her drug drips except for antibiotics and the electrolyte solution that feeds her.

Also a major accomplishment - she had her first bably poop today.

Tomorrow morning she gets a belly scan, and if things go well we may be able to take out the breathing tube and start feeding her!

More detail follows below if you dare...(warning, getting dangerous with medical jargon...)

Since birth, she has had problems maintaining a good blood pressure (causing mommy much heartache over all of the monitor beeping when the pressure swings low). She has been getting lots of drugs (dopamine, dobutamine, and hydrocortisol) to bring it up. Over the last few days her bp has been getting better, and the doctors "ween" her off of the drugs by reducing the amount gradually. Today, all of the drugs are DC'd (discontinued), and her blood pressure has stabilized!

As of yesterday, she had two IVs - one going into her arm and one into her leg, and also an arterial line which fed a tube from her other arm into a main artery. And, an O2 sensor on her foot, a skin temp sensor taped to her underarm, heartrate and breathing sensors taped to her chest. Into her throat goes a suction tube down into her tummy, and a breathing tube into her lungs. By this morning, they removed the arterial line and one of the IVs, so there was much less stuff trailing off of her. We are reminded of yesterday - she had up to seven drug pumps running on her all at once, now down to two!

Her belly is also getting some attention today. Doctors came by several times to check out her ostomy (her small intestine now pokes out the side of her belly and drains into a plastic bag - eventually they will do further surgery to connect her back up with her proper poop hole). They flushed it out with a small tube and pulled some sticky green goo out. Also, she had her first poop! This is a good sign that at least her meconium (baby poop) is starting to loosen up. She will get a scan of her upper GI (gasto-intestinal?) in the morning, and possibly inject a solvent which will help to dissolve the goo in her intestine. Once this stuff is cleared up, we should hopefully be able to remove the breathing tube and start feeding her.

We miss home, but the doctors and nurses here have been great. We are staying at the Ronald McDonald suite in the hospital, which is really amazing - tonight was pizza night (donated by Papa John's).

Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers.

Love, Bill Denise Ella