All Smiles

Hi all!

Yesterday as I was about to go to sleep, I got a sweet text from Ella's nurse and this is what I saw...

😍😍😍

How cute is that?! Ella was smiling a ton for all of the nurses last night and those smiles continued today!!! This is really significant because she hasn't been smiling at us since she was admitted 54 days ago, and even then they were few and far between. So we were VERY excited! Matt and I got to hold her a lot today as well. She was awake and so happy--even during trach and wound care, which by the way, the wounds are getting much better!

Here are some photos from today...

Look at how chunky she's getting!!! So cute! We told Eli to look at the camera and smile  and he said that Ella wasn't going to so I think that he thought he had an out too. 😂

During the doctors' rounds today, we were told that the echocardiogram from yesterday showed something that made Dr. Hill want to get an xray with a view from her side. In the xray we saw that Ella's shunt and stents in her shunt were damaged from the compressions done last Saturday. This is most likely the reason we've had such a hard time getting her oxygen saturations back up. Recently, she's needed so much more oxygen and we weren't sure why, so it is nice to have some sort of explanation as to why she's needed more. So... that means... another heart cath... Tomorrow at some point between 12-2pm Ella will go into the cath lab with Dr. Hill and we pray that he will be able to fix the shunt easily. This cath is more risky in some ways than when she was on ECMO and got the other heart cath. Dr. Hill will have to stop the blood flow to the lungs quickly to repair it, whereas before, the ECMO machine took care of the oxygenation of the blood. Sounds scary right?? There's always a risk in each of the procedures, but we are so confident in Dr. Hill's abilities and we pray God will guide his hands. Maybe this is all it will take to get her progressing more quickly!!!

I can't believe tomorrow marks 55 days in the hospital during this admit. We only have 20 more days to match the amount of days that we were in here when she was first born. It's crazy how this has just become our new norm!

Please pray for the heart cath to go well and that Ella's sats would get better!!!

Love,
Jillian