Still Progressing

Karsie is still working to get out of the NICU! Today (or rather sometime last night) her feeds were condensed to 1hr on and 2 hr off. She now gets 67mL over 1 hour! She is doing very well with that and in the next day or so she will condense again down to 30min!!! She is also having fewer spit-ups. Over the last three days she has only had maybe 2 medium sized spit-ups. This means she is tolerating the condensing. She is getting better at taking the bottle, taking from 10-30mL each time within the 30 minute limit. She also went up to 25 calories/oz today. The dietitian is still a little concerned with how slowly she is gaining weight. She is at 3.217 today for her weight. Therefore, it is possible she might get a blood transfusion within the next week. She is working on making her own red blood cells, but with everything else her body has to do, she is a little low. This is not a huge problem, because her body is working on fixing it... but a transfusion might help her have a little more energy. The problem with doing the transfusion would be that it would signal to her body that it can stop making red blood cells because she has enough, and it would start the whole process over again. The doctors and nurse practitioners will watch her weight and her levels closely this week and decide if the benefits are worth the risk. This will also give us a chance to donate blood for her to receive if she does get the transfusion.
She is doing really very well, just progressing slowly.