One Week Birthday

Today is Sophie's 1 week birthday. Her weight is up to 3 lbs, 7 ozs. It's up more than 2 ounces in one day. That's not all good news. She put on too much yesterday. Her doctors say that some of it is fluid retention & it's forcing her heart to work harder than it should. They gave her a diuretic to help with that.

We spoke to the cardiac doctor today. The results of yesterday's echo cardiogram were no change. That's great news. She's still stable enough to stay the course of letting her grow before they do the surgery.

We're celebrating some other exciting news today. The chromosomal tests came back today and all Sophie's chromosomes are normal! This sounds like something routine, but it's been worrying us since October. When we first found out about the heart defects, the perinatal doctor told us that birth defects are often associated with chromosomal abnormalities & offered to do an amniocentesis to check it out. We really struggled with the decision on whether or not to do the test. I was 24 weeks along at that point & the test itself can trigger early delivery. We decided that it was better to wait and see rather than risk the health problems of an extremely early delivery on top of the known heart defects. So, the nagging worry we've had since October has finally been resolved. Yeah!

Sophie is now getting 12 mL of milk at each serving. I got to change her diaper & take her temperature (under the armpit) again today. She's not thrilled about either, but it's a treat to see all of her. She had a few minutes of awake time before her 2pm snack. It's really fun to see her try to get oriented with the world around her. She's fed through a tube that goes straight to her gut so she doesn't waste energy on eating. After her snack, she settled down in my arms for a good snooze. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.