Day 12

I suppose it should say day 11 since day 12 has just begun. Nevertheless. Grace has had a few quiet days, which is good I have to remind myself that it's good. She's been very stable. She went 24 hours without requireing any blood product at all and then when she got some, it was only platelets. She was awake for quite a few hours yesterday and all her vitals stayed where they should, which is so good since she was getting so stressed out before when there was noise or she was awake. I missed it because I had to be home with the boys but Adam said she was awake for 2 hours straight and they didnt have to give her a boost of drugs to calm her down that whole time. He texted me about doing mouth care with Colostrum but I don't know if he actually did or not. 
Grace still has alot of fluid around her lungs, they are removing fluid like crazy from her little body, each day she is loosing a little weight, she was down to 9 lbs yesterday, I'm not sure what the heaviest she was. She was 7#4oz at birth and with being on the ECMO she balooned quite a bit. At the time I didnt think she looked all that big, probably because Iain was 9#11 oz at birth and Isaac 9#5 oz so she must have just looked like a normal sized baby to us:) But looking at the pictures from last week, she was huge! So they've seen alot of fluid around her right lung and they were hoping that with putting the kidney on the ECMO circuit they could get that to leave but it's not really going anywhere. So they will likely place a chest tube on her right side as well today. I know they need to get it out, I know it needs to be drained but it's things like that that get me discouraged. At this point I thought we'd be starting to take things out, but we just keep adding more and more to her.  I know we just have to be positve though.
We put a family picture above her head on her incubator top and she was staring at it while she was awake. Studying the family who is so anxious for her to come home and join them! She didnt like taking her eyes off it. She sticks her toungue out alot, it's really cute, the nurses say she sticks it out when she's mad! She must have learned that from her brothers.
Keep the prayers coming, pray that Grace's lungs start working the way they need to, that she can come of ECMO in the next week, since Sunday will be the start of week 3 on ECMO which is really long. Pray that our boys continue to do well with this craziness, they are each having a hard time but are handling it pretty well most of the time. Pray for strength for Adam and I and please pray for Grace to be comfortable and strong and for her to just pull through all these struggles and get them behind us. I know the Lord is using her for a great purpose, I know His plan for her must be grand. She is the most precious baby I've ever seen, she just oozes sweetness even though there's not much she can do. She is "full of spunk" as one of the nurses told me. I can't wait until she is just running around driving me crazy:)