Fluids

I personally like my fluids.  Water, Milk, Diet Coke, Beer(notice I put water and milk FIRST there, Mom?).  The more the better.  But for little Emma, she had some fluid building up in her lungs over the last couple days, which is the most current theory as to why she was having to struggle and work harder and harder to breathe.  So the doctors gave her a diuretic today to help relieve her of some of that excess fluid.  She responded to it pretty well.  Her breathing rate came down to a safer level and the amount of oxygen she's receiving also came down.  It was at higher levels than we'd seen at any point during her life at one point yesterday and into this morning, so apparently the diuretic worked very well pretty quickly.  She still has to come down even further on the oxygen, but she's doing better than she was the last couple days.

So other than that there haven't been a whole lot of changes over the last couple days.  She's still getting 27ml of milk every 3 hours.  They informed us today that they're going to keep her there for a while.  As she continues to grow, the amount of milk she gets will stay constant, but her milk intake per pound of body weight will go down if they don't increase the amount of milk she gets as she adds body weight.  This is because they want to cut down on the amount of fluid she's receiving.  They will also cut down on the fortification of the milk, and in doing so will decrease her calories each day.  So she'll get less fluid, which will make it less likely that fluid will build up around her lungs.  They don't want to continue having to give her a diuretic more often than they absolutely have to.  They can have some bad side effects, one example of which is kidney stones.  So they want to avoid this as best as they possibly can.

She continues to hold her own body temperature very well.  She's still had only the one bottle because of the instability of her breathing over the last few days.  Hopefully soon we'll be able to give her another bottle.  But overall, she's still doing everything they expect her to do.  If they can get her lungs cleared out they will feel very good about her condition.  So keep praying for her folks.  They're working more than you know!!