Moving on up

Olivia looked great today. Nice and pink. It's amazing what some blood will do for a complexion. Her crown / tiara (otherwise known as iv) has been taken out of her scalp. They tried to keep it in case she needed more blood today but it went bad so they had to take it out. Turns out her hematacrit was back up to 32 so she doesn't need any more right now.

Normally she is wide awake when her dad holds and talks to her but this afternoon she was pretty tired and slept most of the time. Waking now and then to give him a quick smirk or a wink. Unfortunately I didn't catch any of them w/ the camera.

We weighed her four times to confirm what the scale said. 1199 grams. I want to get excited about this but tonight she is getting her first feeds with added lipids and I am nervous that if she doesn't tolerate it, they will stop her feeds and she will lose weight.

It's time to turn in. Good night.

did you know

you may already know...but in case you don't... you can click on any of the pictures below to view them much larger. you will have to hit the "back" key to come back to the blog.

Strong like her father

Tonight is a yucky post. I almost hate to post the picture, but it's Olivia's reality...it is what her afternoon/evening was like...so I'm going to share.

Apparently her hematocrit dropped lower then we originally thought (22 not 25) or perhaps it was just that the doctors re-thought their course of action... but either way it was decided that our sweet baby would get her 4th (or is it 5th? I'll have to ask Mike) transfusion. The transfusion is not painful in itself but getting the iv in is. She was stuck with iv needles 9 times before the 10th one was sucessful. I know this because you can play connect the dots. Two on each arm, two on each ankle, one on the left side of her scalp and finally the one shown in the picture that is on the right side of her scalp. I was told that she cried pretty hard for the attempts in her arms and her scalp but when I was with her for the tries in her foot she seemed more aggrivated then anything. I wish I could trade places with her so she didn't have to endure these types of things. We can already tell that she is going to be tough like her father. Tell us Grandma Melville .... has Olivia already passed her dad's record for amount of time spent in a hospital? I just hope that when she gets out of the hospital she doesn't try to out do him on the number of stitches!!!! He can keep that record.