NICU Sports

Dear Ellie,

I dream about you every night.  This time, it was a deep sleep dream.  In other words, I wasn't in the bathroom stroking a hairbrush or tossing a pile of dirty laundry into the air while shouting "weeee!"

Having had a night of real sleep, I felt rather refreshed upon arriving at the NICU this morning and I was equally refreshed to find that you had no new problems.  We even made some progress.  Your other eye opened up, though I'm sad to say I haven't seen them yet because while receiving light therapy, a mask covers your face to protect your eyes.  This shouldn't be a problem for too long because your jaundice is on the mend as well.  They are now giving you more breast milk, going up from a trivially small 1 ml to what one might call doubly trivial (2 ml's)... To illustrate, yesterday you were getting 1 thimble worth of milk.  Now, you are getting 2.  You've handled it quite well, too, gloriously heaving it out of your butt and leaving none lingering in your intestines.  The condition of a micro-preemie's intestines is a big deal, so soiled diapers are very exciting here in the NICU.

Unfortunately, your ductus artereosis is unlikely to close on its own so they'll probably have to treat it, which means no progress on the growth front for a few days if that happens.  That's unfortunate, since we've banked so much breast milk that it's spilling out of the NICU fridge and they've refused to store any more here at the NICU.

In other news, you are still very active and wiggly.  That's good.  There was a bandage on your foot for where they tested your blood sugar.  I use the term "was" because in one herculean kick of your legs, you flung the bandage off your foot, across the incubator, and into the incubator window.  Score!