Day 26, Evening

Hannah's doctor today said she was doing "wonderfully". Words like that are music to our ears, because doctors tend to not throw them around carelessly. But we have to remember to keep it in context. Hanna is still in ICU, so by definition she is very sick. Carla never likes to hear that, but it just means that Hannah could not survive on her own yet. She is on a ventilator to help her breathe, an IV to maintain fluid and nourishment, a feeding tube, and in a temperature controlled isolette because she cannot yet regulate her own body temperature. Under normal circumstances, she would not be expected to use her lungs, digestive system, or temperature control for another two months, so of course they need more time to develop.

But Carla held Hannah for over an hour today, both of them dozing occasionally while I read my book and watched the monitors that show Hannah's blood oxygen, heart rate, respiration rate and volume, and blood pressure. Those few minutes each day are what keep us going, because we can see stability in the numbers and know that the doctors and nurses will do everything in their power to keep those vitals steady so Hannah can continue to eat, breathe, sleep, and grow.

Hannah is now up to 2 ccs of milk and down to 2 ccs of IV nutrition per hour. So she's getting half her nutrition from milk and half from the IV. They will gradually increase the milk and decrease the IV until she's getting everything she needs from the milk.

There are still several unknowns and potential problems, but that's true with any pregnancy and even with newborns healthy at birth. But we don't know yet if the steroids used to get her lungs going will have other developmental side-effects, or whether she will have vision problems common in preemies. The probable scarring within her lungs (caused by forcing them to work three months early) will most likely be a non-issue after the first year, since, as her lungs grow in size, the new non-scarred tissue will outnumber the tiny amount of stressed tissue that had to keep her going in these first few weeks. All in all, these are manageable problems, and nothing likely to keep us from taking home a beautiful little baby girl a few months from now.