Two Weeks Old and Growing

Sarah put Stella's birth story below so if you haven't had a chance to read it, scroll on down or click to the left.

Stella is a very stable premie baby, as the doctors and nurses tell us.  She's gone from full blown monitoring to just heart rate and respiration monitoring while she's in the isolet.  That means Sarah and I can unplug her wires when we bring her out to hold.  She still has her gastro tube in so we have to keep track of that along with the three sticky probe wires used for the above monitoring but we can actually walk around the room with her now.

As of last night, Wednesday, her weight was up to 7lbs10oz so she's above her birthwieght and climbing.  Her isolet temp is down to 80.1 degrees and she's holding her own temp at 98.6 so the nurses will slowly continue to crank down the isolet temp to about 75.  When she's stable at 75 they'll move her to a small little crib so she'll be maintaining her own temp at room tempurature.  Once she's done that for two days she'll have passed that test.

Her food intake has leveled at 45ml per feeding, as much as her little stomache will hold.  She's taking food from the bottle and gets just over half of it down before she tires out and we have to give the rest to her through the gastro tube.  Once she sucks down all of her food on her own for a couple of days, she passes that test.

When those two remaining tests are mastered, she'll be ready to come home!  She's showing improvements in both every day so it won't be long now until we have the little darling in our home.
We are just about ready for her as I am touching up the nursery room paint today and Sarah will paint some cool graphics on the walls.