THEY ALL DO IT DIFFERENTLY

Let's start with the easy and fun stuff for today. Ava gained an ounce since yesterday and is up to 4 lbs 3.2 ounces. A whole pound from when she was born!! They have turned her isollette down to 30.0 which is where it needs to be to wein her. In the next couple days, I am guessing they will just put her in the crib style beds. It is nice for the nurses to have her in the isollette because they can turn the temp up if they need to. But, she is at the weight she needs to be to get out of there! The other great news of the day is that she drank a WHOLE bottle today. Debbie, her primary nurse, tried at her 8am cares this morning and she did so well! Debbie says she is "amazing"! We think so too ;-)

As I mentioned yesterday, we have a new doctor this week. She seems to be concerned with the size of Ava's tummy. It's sort of big, but has always been that way. No one has mentioned anything until she did yesterday which is interesting to me. I don't understand why four doctors that have rounded on her in the past couple weeks wouldn't be worried about something but this one is. I guess they all do things a little differently. Better to be cautious and find nothing than to not be and find something!! Ava had a tummy x-ray a couple weeks ago when she was in the NICU to make sure everything looked good (because she was slow to get started with feedings). It all looked fine then. So, the doc looked over that x-ray again yesterday and ordered another one to be done today. They did that this morning and everything looked fine, she just has some air in there. They also took away the fortifier that they put in her milk (to increase calories), because it is a cow's milk biproduct and they want to make sure she isn't having a negative reaction to the cow's milk. So, since they didn't find anything on the x-ray, they want to do a barium enema tomorrow to do some further testing. The doc listed off a million reasons that this could be happening (I wish she wouldn't have) and we are just doing the testing to rule things out. Like I said, it could be as simple as an issue with the fortifier. I am really not worried about it but we'll see what they come up with. The procedure will be done tomorrow morning at Children's at 9:30am. I am going to be down there for the morning to go with her to Children's and be with her before and after the procedure. I guess it is a pretty simple one and shouldn't take too long. I will hopefully be able to blog tomorrow mid-day with an update.