I'd like to introduce you to...

...the eyes we won't ever be able to say no to.

Eliza made it through the surgery pretty well. She was in some pain the day after which we hated to see but we tried to make sure what she felt was minimal. The surgeon commented that her PDA was pretty big when he got in there so the surgery should really help with her progress. The frequency of drops in her oxygen saturation and her heart rate have decreased significantly which seems like a really good sign.

Eliza's plan for the weekend was to "blow and grow"(we've learned so much medical slang from our short stint at the hospital). Meaning they aren't weaning her off the ventilator too fast so she can conserve calories, start feeding and hopefully gain weight. Saturday she got 2.3 mL of milk every 6 hours and today she is at 3mL.  So far it seems like her gut is handling the milk fine so that is great news for her ostomy.  These are really tiny amounts but every little bit helps at this point. It's so hard to watch her getting thinner every day. 

Eliza's nurse made her a cute little bow before her surgery - and stuck it to the side of her head. :) We are finally starting to get a more regular team of nurses which is really great! It has been very frustrating to constantly have a nurse that had never seen Eliza before. A lot of her symptoms and progress have to do with how she is doing from one day to the next so you can imagine how difficult that is when there was little consistency in people. Duke has a ICN nursing staff of over 200! A couple of her primary nurses have brought her little gifts -like in the picture above with her tiny stuffed puppy that hangs out in the isolette with her.