Midnight Update

I realized late in the day that I hadn't put anything up yesterday so I decided to make a quick post on Emma's status.

Emma went in again today from another biliruben test. These are starting to really get old becasue each time they do this test they draw blood by pricking her heal and she now has over six pricks on her heals and they are running our of realest ate to poke her on.

We have not yet heard how yesterday's test came back, which is unusual because the last few tests Dr Shah was back to us in an hour or so. So we are thinking this may be a good thing. While we were there we had her record pulled from the last test and found that her biliruben levels had only come down to 16.8 from the 17.7 on Friday. Keeping in mind that a level of 18 or higher gets us back in the hospital, and that her level was only 10.4 when she went under the lights at the hospital, this is not what we were hoping to hear.

Of course in response to the slowly declining levels we are keeping her on the light blanket, and trying to get her some sun here and there. Emma is doing her part as well in the amount of food she has been eating, in fact just a few short minutes ago I finished giving her a bottle that she came within 5-10 ml of 100 ml. This is fantastic because we used to have to force feed her to even get close to 25 ml, and most of the day she was only taking around 40 ml a feeding. So Emma is on the right path it is just a matter of time before she is better.

Today (5/23) we are going to Kalamazoo to have Emma examined by an infant cardiologist to evaluate her heart murmur. They tell us that we will have a definitive result from the testing tomorrow so we look forward to learning about her murmur and reporting back by tomorrow evening. We are optimistic about the murmur because Jen has one and has always been medically fine with it, but it needs to be checked out in case it is a sign of a real problem.

Tonight Grandma Patti, Aunt Heidi, Uncle Matt and Emma's cousins Connor and Carson visited and brought us diner. We enjoyed their visit a great deal and especial enjoyed the meal that Grandma Patti made for us. The cake was especially good!

As things have calmed down some we have been able to get some more things done around the house. I fixed the back screen door, the leaking kitchen sink, and got some laundry done, while Jen got her blog postings started with her great account of Emma's birth story for all of you to enjoy.

We have a big day a head of us with the trip to Kalamazoo and we will report back as soon as we can. Everyone keep the prayers coming, and we will let you know how Little Emma's heart is doing.

Thanks again everyone we appreciate the support...

JWR