Whirlwind

So much is happening lately with Eliza! A recap of whats happened since the last post:

- Eliza pooped on Monday! Hooray! Poop has never been so exciting. This means everything is moving through her system like it should after the surgery. It also means they've started feeding her again which makes Eliza a happier girl.

- They've started her gradually back on feeds. They are going up by about 5ml every 12 hours to make sure her body can handle everything ok (since most of her guts haven't had anything to do for the last 4 months) and so far she seems to be doing ok! Right now she is at 35ml (a little over an ounce) every 3 hours, and hopefully soon she will be on "full feeds" and her central line can come out. No more IVs or TPN!! From here they will just be experimenting with how much she can take and what additives she will need to grow optimally. At 5.5lbs, 4 weeks adjusted she still has a lot of catching up to do, so they want to get the biggest bang for the buck.

- The Opthamologist came by Tuesday and we were all very happy to hear that her right eye had NOT gotten any worse! This was the concern when deciding whether or not to go ahead with her abdominal surgery so it was a huge relief to hear that the surgery did not cause her eyes to get worse.

- The Retina Specialist did her evaluation of Eliza on Wednesday. She has concerns about the state of both of her eyes but feels that they are not at the point of requiring surgery. She wants to wait and see but feels that right now the ROP is not significantly damaging her vision. She was a very interesting doctor and was happy to talk to us about all the details of her eyes. It always helps to feel like you have most of the info, even if it doesn't all make sense to us mere mortals. She will be rechecking her eyes again monday and probably once a week for the foreseeable future.

This all brings me to the fact that she may be escaping from Duke very soon!!!! We don't say "going home" around these parts because it's asking for trouble and all of us at the NICU are very superstitious. So.. she maybe going to "Camp" next week!!!!! There have been lots of discussions lately amongst her care takers in regards to her plan of escape. Right now we have a very long list of things to accomplish in the next week so we are busy checking things off. Eliza just needs to follow the plan. :)

More later from a very happy momma!