Day 54

The last few days have continued to be good.  Today especially so - this marks the first day in maybe a couple of weeks that Wren gained a substantial amount of weight.  When was the last time you celebrated gaining weight substantially in a single day?  It's easy to monitor on these babies, because the special isolettes they are in have built-in scales that allow the nurses to easily check each morning.  We get daily email updates reporting the latest weight and some other facts and figures about the previous 24 hours.  Usually over the last few weeks, Wren is reported to lost 5-10 grams most days, and gains a small bit every once in a while.  Yesterday, however, she gained a full 60 grams (about 2 oz).  She's still about 12 ounces behind Avery, but the medical team was very happy about this.  She needs to get bigger to keep progressing.  The other cool thing that happened yesterday was I got to hold her for the first time in maybe three weeks.  She is finally strong enough that we can do that once again.  It's such a little thing to appreciate, but we are grateful.

Avery is also doing well, though she is still fussy whenever you talk to her or hold her lately.  She's still gaining weight, but remaining about the same with her oxygen settings.  Her head size did not change in circumference from yesterday to today -- that's a good sign that she is handling well how the doctors are tapping her hydrocephalus reservoir.  Rather than tapping three times a week, they decided that twice was still sufficient, but they now extract more fluid.  She is doing well with it, but still is facing somewhere on the horizon the need to install a permanent shunt to manage the fluid.