ECMO Day 4- Lots of Visitors

Aunt Staci reading Elli "How Much Do I love You" She was awake prior to the book, but I don't think she got to look at too many of the pictures.

Elli finally calmed down after they turned her to her right side, she tends to get cranky when they try to turn her to that side with her ECMO cannulas. Thankfully SugarBear was there to help comfort her, she was really latching on to him.

And last but not least, Elli was wide awake yesterday around noon. I got this amazing picture of her with her eyes wide open, and of course she was sucking on her vent tube again. Overall she was pretty awake for periods of the day yesterday, but we were able to settle her down without them having to give her too many extra doses of Morphine and Versed

Clearly this is my NEW Favorite Picture...Is it just me or does she get cuter every day? She was so wide awake in this picture, her eyes were so intent on focusing on me. I can't beleive how beautiful she is, especially when I see those big blue eyes.

Yesterday was pretty busy for Elli, my brother and sister-in-law visited around noon. We tried to out wait the doctors for rounds, but they were running very late, so we finally gave up and went to eat lunch with them around 1:00.

On rounds, they decided that Elli was peeing too much, and stopped her daily dose of Lasix because she was getting too dry, so at 4:00 when they changed out all the lines like they do daily, her blood pressure started to drop off, luckily I was pumping, because Brian said that it and her heart rate got pretty low, but once they got all the lines hooked back up and called the doctor, she perked right up. Brian said the doctor no more than got to the bedside and her blood pressure was back to her normal. Must just be the doctor's presence and Elli knows to straiten up. They did decide to give her a 30ml Normal Saline bolus because she had several huge wet diapers through out the day, and one more with a little poo in it. At 4:00 while I was pumping, we had more visitors, my sister Staci, and my mom and dad. Elli was awake for a little while and then we got her to fall back to sleep without any PRN meds. While we were out to eat during report time, the doctor decided to order another Normal Saline bolus just to make sure that Elli wasn't getting too dehydrated. She responded really well to both and her blood pressure stabilized out for the rest of the evening.

Elli did get a unit of blood and platelets last night, per protocol according to her labs. This is very normal for a baby on ECMO because the ECMO machine pretty much eats up the platelets and some babies need platelets every 6 hours while others need them daily. Elli has been needing about 1 unit per day. Brian said the heard some where that a baby on ECMO for 38 days will use 6 gallons of blood (don't quote him on that, I think he read it on another blog, but it was something like that). But I called at about 3:00 when I got up to pump to check on Elli and the night nurse Cindy said that she really liked her blood and platelets and that she was doing great and had been sleeping most of the night, not requiring any PRN meds, so that was great.

We are looking forward to another boring but busy day, as Elli is scheduled to have lots of visitors, my parents stayed in KC last night as did my sister, and Brian's mom was already here this morning to pick Brian up at the Ronald McDonald house around 8:00. We are just trying to cherish all these moments we have with Elli while she is on ECMO because of how stable she is, after she comes off ECMO and has her surgery, she will be very unstable as she will have to do all the work of her heart and lungs which she is not used to doing. At that time, we will not be touching her much at all and her stimulation will be almost zero. So for now it is so amazing to see her each and every day growing stronger and responding to our voices. Each day Elli is growing stronger and so are we, but the more she is awake, the harder it makes to leave her each night, that little lady really knows how to tug on our heart strings.

Thank you to everyone who continues to check the blog for updates, it is so nice to know that so many people are pulling for Elli. The outpouring of support has been so amazing not only Elli but Brian and I. We love to read all the comments on the blog, actually Brian is kind of addicted to them, and loves to tell me about all the people who are thinking about Elli. I will try to post some more pictures this afternoon and let everyone know if there are any changes. As for now, The Reed family continues to gain strength and hope each and every day!