Our baby is 6 weeks 5 days old, 6 lbs 20 1/4" long

Gracie seems to be feeling much better today. Praise the Lord. She has great color and is acting like herself;aware, alert,happy, and hungry. We discovered a new bottle/nipple that seems to be working really well so far. She aced her last three feeds, so we have our fingers crossed.Her white blood cell count is finally going down, which means that her body has successfully fought off, whatever it was fighting, most likely a virus. They stopped the anti-biotics (which were precautionary in case of infection).
May 3, 2009
4 days later...Gracie isn't gaining enough weight. So the Dr.'s increased her volume. She is consuming her full volume a couple of times a day but still needs her tube to finish most feedings. Honestly, its frustrating, a week ago she was doing so well and we were days from going home. We have been working on feeds for a month now, so we are forced to consider her options at this point.
The consensus is that babies thrive at home. So, if our goal is to get her home than we have to consider a way to feed her when she gets too tired to eat. We are praying about and considering the GI tube that I mentioned in an earlier post. The reality of a surgery, although small, is a little bit hard to handle, but the benefits seem to far out weigh the risks. The first, being that there has been so much pressure and so much riding on every feed and this would allow her to eat what she can by bottle and tube feed the rest. Secondly, we saw what happened when she got sick and let's face it, we have a 3 year old at home. If she gets sick again, we would be right back in the hospital. So, we will talk to the Dr.'s tomorrow morning and decide with their guidance, what to do. And hopefully come up with a discharge plan.
Please pray that God will give us His peace and that Gracie will gain weight so that we can get her home, where she can thrive.
We are so blessed to have the best friends and family ever! Thank you, Thank you. Just knowing that you are praying is the best gift you can give us.