29 Weeks Tomorrow

It's crazy to think that Eli will have been in the NICU for three weeks on Wednesday. Time has gone by extremely slow, and has also whizzed by us at the same time. 

Good news:

1. His arterial line came out and he's pretty stable, so Emily gets to hold Eli tomorrow!
2. The ophthalmologist checked his eyes for yeast today and found nothing.
3. His blood gases are getting better little by little.
4. They started giving him pedialyte yesterday and he tolerated it well, so today they are giving him breast milk.
5. He is now weighing in at 2 lbs 12 oz! (His birth weight was 2 lbs 7 oz.)

We did have a little scare Friday that had to do with Eli's Ileostomy. Ever since the surgery meconeum has been leaking out of the mucus fistula. This is normal, but we started noticing that the stoma was getting darker and darker which is really bad. When the stoma gets darker, that could mean that the intestine is beginning to necrose.  A surgeon was called in to check it out, and what he found made us all breath a sigh of relief. The darkening of the stoma was caused by a build-up of dry meconeum, and the stoma underneath was pink and looked great! 

Reading back over the last paragraph, I realized there are a lot of words that I myself just learned. So I'm going to provide some definitions. Just in the last 3 weeks, we have learned SO much. 

Definitions:

Ileostomy - a surgical operation in which a piece of the ileum is diverted to an artificial opening in the abdominal wall.

Ileum - the third portion of the small intestine, between the jejunum and the cecum.

Meconium- the earliest stool of an infant. Unlike later feces, meconium is composed of materials ingested during the time the infant spends in the uterus: intestinal epithelial cells, lanugo, mucus, amniotic fluid, bile, and water

Mucus Fistula - The non-working stoma in a loop ileostomy. The mucous fistula can be the second of two stomas in a temporary ostomy, or the second opening in a single loop ostomy stoma

Stoma - an artificial opening made into a hollow organ, esp. one on the surface of the body leading to the gut or trachea.

Necrosis - the death of most or all of the cells in an organ or tissue due to disease, injury, or failure of the blood supply.

There is another couple in the NICU in a similar situation to ours. They are from Colorado and were visiting family here in Dallas for Christmas. The wife started feeling contractions, so they went to hospital and later that night/morning (26th) their baby girl was born. She was only at 25 weeks. She has been doing great until yesterday when she had a similar surgery to the one Eli had, except her was a lot more severe. We're hoping and praying that she gets through this. 

This week has been filled with little improvements and little setbacks, but overall the trend has been towards improvement. Thanks to all our friends and family who have been such a great support over the past few weeks. This past Fall I interned at Southwest Airlines and my last day was the 19th of December, but my work group has continued to be a great support. They threw a baby shower for Emily before she got admitted to the hospital, and just this past week they took Emily and me out to lunch. You've probably heard that Southwest is a great place to work, and I think that explains why. 

Let's hope this week is another good one!