A Heartfelt Story : Slowly, But Surely Making Progress + PHOTOS!

Hi everyone,

Today was another pretty good day! Ella was alert so we got to interact with her a lot more again. The nurse that we have for today and tomorrow hadn't seen her since Thursday and she was so excited about how much less swollen she is. Ella has been on the heparin and seems to be doing well with it. We are anxious for those blood clots to go away and are praying that this medication will help do that without effecting the bleed in her head.

We have a different doctor on shift now (he came on yesterday) and I really like him. He was the doctor on shift when Ella was admitted to the PICU. He is really positive and optimistic. He wants to push Ella more to get her breathing on her own. Today he had her on a schedule with a goal to take her reliance on the ventilator down from a 30 to a 10. I know that probably doesn't make any sense to you, but know that it's a good thing!! When we left this evening, she was down to a 16 and they will continue to take her down overnight if she does well with it. If she keeps it up, it looks as if she will be able to get extubated relatively soon (within a couple days). She will then be put on the CPAP "bubble" machine again and then will transition to the high flow machine then will be off everything. I cannot wait for the day when she won't have so much on her cute little face.

I didn't realize this, but Dr. Watanabe got Ella's A-line in last night in ONE TRY!!! What a champ! He was REALLY excited about it and was telling everyone. Ella has so many scabs from where the previous doctors tried to get a line in but failed. I was so thankful she didn't have to go through more than one more poke! Yippee! This is to help monitor her blood pressure and to get blood draws to test her oxygen levels and levels of many other things. So we are thrilled it worked!

As we have said before, Ella is getting really skinny. We switched her socks today and none of the newborn socks stay on because her little calves are too small. They have upped her nutrition quite a bit and we can tell it's been helping her heal much better. We are continuing to pray that the Lord allows Ella's body to respond to the formula that she has to be on due to the chylothorax. Apparently there's a small chance that her body won't like that either and she would have to be taken off of it... So please pray along with us in that!

A lot of people have asked us how we are doing and we have been telling them that we are doing pretty well, and we aren't lying. Of course, we would never have chosen this path, but we know that God has been giving us the strength and peace throughout this whole experience. We have been told by the nurses that we are so "calm" and we can only say that it is not because of us, it's totally God's grace upon us. There are definitely days that are easier than others but overall, we have been doing well. We are so thankful for all of your prayers and support.

Side note: On Saturday, our weekend nurse came up to me and told me that she was listening to a song on K Love (I didn't realize she was a Christian at the time) and she felt like the Lord had put a song on her heart to share with us. It is called He Said, by Group 1 Crew. If you have listened to K Love, you've probably heard it. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmi9IBP209s. I felt so thankful that we have had so many Christians caring for our baby. It's awesome to know that they are praying for her too. 💜

Here are some more recent photos of Ella girl: (Check out the swelling in her face difference from the picture with Eli on Saturday to the bottom one today (Tuesday)... big difference!)