Little Miss Baby M: Answered Prayer

Tonight we held little miss Farrah again for the first time in a month! She has been doing so well with the change to the conventional vent, so Farrah's night nurse Lisa said that it would be ok to hold her. Boy, did we jump on the chance to do that! Ray and my schedules matched up today, so we met at home, grabbed something to eat, and went over to the hospital. We stopped in at the gift shop and picked up a balloon with butterflies on it for Farrah's 2 month birthday. It was great to be able to spend time at the hospital together. Holding Farrah tonight was an incredible answer to prayer!!!

Please keep praying that Farrah will come off the ventilator soon. Her xray this morning looked ok, so they will just keep a close eye on her. As of tonight, her ventilator settings were very low. Her oxygen was 23%. 21% is room air, so she barely needs any support. The pressures being pushed out from the vent were very low as well. If Farrah keeps this up, she should be flying off the vent in no time. She is 37 weeks now, so week by week, we should start to see her reach more milestones and get closer and closer to coming home.

The other big thing to pray for is that she will start to steadily gain weight. For the past three nights, her weight has bounced up and down by only a small number of grams - holding around 3 pounds, 8 ounces. Tonight it was down again. The hope was that Farrah would start gaining more weight once they added the fortifier to her feeds. While she is tolerating the fortifier very well, she is not gaining weight as quickly as they hoped she would. It sounds like they would like to try one of the powder based fortifiers that we used in the beginning called HMF (that she did not originally tolerate). With HMF, they can give her a lot more breast milk than what she is getting now, and she was definitely gaining weight on breast milk alone. With the current fortifier, she is receiving 50% breast milk and 50% fortifier. Hopefully they can figure out the magic combination and Farrah can just grow, grow, grow.

By Fridays, we are so tired after existing on a small amount of sleep each week. Thank you to those of you who have been praying for and sending positive thoughts for Ray's job situation. He has had some interviews lately and we are praying that something permanent will work out very soon. We trust that the right opportunity is out there - it can just be hard waiting for it.

As we reflect on Farrah's past 63 days in the NICU, we remember that we are not in control. Farrah is a miracle and such a blessing to us. All of your support has lifted us up and encouraged us more than you will ever know. There is no greater gift than your prayers and positive thoughts for all three of us, especially Farrah. I've posted some photos from tonight below.