Happy 3 week birthday Baby Bella!!

Wow, our little angel is 3 weeks old!! She is doing much better today. She is really peeing a lot, which is helping to remove a lot of the excess fluid from her body. She is starting to lose some of the puffiness and has actually lost some weight. (She gained almost 300 grams of weight after the surgery, mostly water and fluid retention.) Her heart rate is more stable now and ranging in the 160s and her O2 levels are very low, she has been between 21-24% for the last 12 hours!! She is having some blood pressure spikes, but for the most part it too has stabilized. She is off of the Dopamine and Hydrocortozone and is still taking some fentenyl for the pain.
She looks so peaceful and it is so exciting to talk to her and watch her move her little arms and kick her feet when she hears mommy and daddy talking to her. She is sleeping a lot still, but is getting back to her squirmy ways!! She is becoming more active and that is a really good sign. Dr. McGahren, her surgeon, examined her earlier and is happy with her progress. He said the stomas look good, (those are the two portions of her bowel that are protruding from her belly), her belly is getting softer and everything seems to be progressing well.
We are very thankful and are hopeful that she continues to improve so that she can begin to get some of her mom's milk soon. If she continues to progress well sometime next week is when she might get to start eating again, then hopefully our little chunky monkey will start to gain some weight! Some more good news, the nurses said that once the swelling goes down and her condition stabilizes, Machel will be able to hold her again!! They want her to do skin to skin again, but Bella would just have to be on her back rather than on her tummy as mommy holds her! This made us so happy!!!

Well, here are some more pictures of our baby today....




Here's Mommy and Erin visiting.

Thank you all for your continued support, prayers and well wishes! We hope you all had an amazing Christmas!!