Recovery moving right along...

Well I think the doctors are impressed with little Miss Zoe....she's held down the food and has pooped (twice today)! They have decided to move her up 5 ml every 12 hours.  Her goal is to get to 70 ml at each feed and hold it down.  We've learned that alot of babies who have had bowl surgeries eventually hit a plateau and then its a slow process to get them to the the proper measurement of milk.  I only hope Zoe continues to fight through it and have the milk stay down.  She seems to thoroughly enjoy the milk.  She's starting to get on a schedule too, around every 2.5 - 3 hours she's starting to wake up and get cranky.  If she continues to hold down the food, after my calculations, Saturday she would hit 70 ml.  Now whether they continue to go up 5 at every 12 hours in the next few days, I don't know.  I'm staying hopeful that she'll come home in the next couple of weeks.  She gained 4 oz in 1 day.  She's currently 7 lbs, 12 oz.  She's getting fuller.  The newborn clothes still seem to swim on her, but that's ok!

Ever since we started the feeds, I've noticed that she pants alot.  The doctors and nurses assure me that she's  reading beautifully on the monitors, but it worries me still.  The panting is due to her heart, and she'll probably pant more than a baby with a normal heart.  I'm afraid I'm going to be more neurotic than I already am and worry she's going to be in distress.  Thank goodness Mike has had medical training (due to his job) and knows when a person is in heart failure.

I go back to work next Monday the 5th.  I'm dreading it, being away from both my babies.  But it seems as if Zoe is going to be home sooner than we all anticipated, so I may only be working for a few weeks than I'll use up the rest of my maternity leave.

And to think the doctors were pushing us to have an "amino" at 20 - 24 weeks because we had the option "to terminate" since her heart didn't look good and could lead to all different types of chromonsonal defects.  It never crossed our minds to terminate, but to think how many people do terminate due to ultrasound pictures that look and seem like there's no hope, but in actuality, the babies would have been just fine.  Zoe is PERFECT and will lead a normal healthy life.

Here's our favorite pictures from Zoe's newborn shoot with Kelly Vanderploeg Photography (http://www.kellyvanderploegphotography.com/)....