11:11am and the past few days

The two things that I will never forget from Virginia's birth were when the nurse called the time of birth as 11:11am and when they finally called over from the adjacent room to tell us "it's a girl!". Normally the doctor would make that announcement after the baby was out, but in a premature birth there is no time for a gender check or a peek over the curtain.

Back to 11:11am. Other than being a cool number, this time of birth wouldn't typically strike me as something too special. However, that time of birth was immediately special to me when I heard it. As I said in a previous post we spent 3 days on the labor and delivery floor. The distinct features of the rooms on labor and delivery were the rock hard beds, the tv set to the newborn channel, and the large red digital clock that sat above the bed. That was the slowest moving clock in the world during those days, but for some reason I noticed 11:11am and 11:11pm every single day. 11:11 is definitely a special time to us now.

The past few days

Virginia has continued to amaze us and has certainly been a little fighter the last few days. She has remained stable and they have been able to lower her ventilator settings each day. They have also started to lower the humidity settings in her isolette. We joke that she is bathing in French Polynesia because of the high heat and humidity that she lays in each day. The heat and humidity help regulate her temperature as well as mature her skin. By lowering the humidity it means that her skin is maturing and we are closer to being able to hold her and start kangaroo care. They have started feeding Virginia breast milk through a feeding tube this week and have been very happy with how well she has been tolerating the feeds, so much so that they have increased the frequency of the feeds as of today.

The biggest news of the past few days is that they successfully placed her central line last night and were also able to take out the lines that they placed in her belly button at birth. She was not very happy during these procedures and gave the staff a good fight but remained stable throughout and never let her heartrate or oxygen levels drop. Unfortunately this morning they realized that the line had slipped out of place a bit. The doctors will be doing a small adjustment tonight, which will hopefully put it back into an optimum position.

The most recent chest xrays look great and she had her 2nd head ultrasound this evening. We should get those results over the weekend. We are praying hard for good results and ideally no changes from Monday's ultrasound.

Specific prayers that we could use this weekend:
That her doctors are able to further lower her ventilator and isolette settings.
That the doctors are able to successfully maneuver her central line into the perfect position.
That her second head scan report comes back clear and unchanged since Monday.