Zoe's Recovering Well...

So the infamous question, how is sweet little Zoe doing?  Well, she's doing amazingly great.  Her billy rubin numbers went down (jaundice), so they removed the billy blanket today.  Her incision from her bowl surgery is healing well.  Dr. Madonna did such a great job on her surgery, that when Zoe is around 5 years old, I truly think the scar will look like she ran into a corner of a table, or a cat scratched her.  You'd never know she had invasive surgery.  She's 6.5 lbs, so only has lost 6 oz. since birth.  Her nutrition is soley through an IV right now.  The tube in her nose, called the "Anderson", will stay in until all the green bile becomes clear. Your body produces so much bile and since she's not eating, its a lot of acidic bile, hence the green color.  They won't even begin to feed her with breast milk until its clear.  So its all on Zoe now.  They said usually around 1-2 weeks post surgery, or longer she should start producing clear bile.  I'm hoping its soon.  I feel so awful for her when she's gagging due to the tube down her throat.   Then it'll be small amounts of milk.  She has about 6 weeks or more before she can come home :(.

Cardiology checks her every morning to see how her heart is doing.  We're hoping that the ASD and VSD holes close on their own, otherwise open heart surgery will need to be done.  Let me tell you, Friday's surgery was hard enough on us, having another possible surgery, well I don't even want to think about it.

Originally she was on medication for her polysplenia (multiple spleens), then they took her off of it.  The Hematology Department feels her spleens work for her, however the Cardiology Department feels differently.  And right now Cardiology trump's Hematology since Zoe will be a cardiac patient for the rest of her life.  So they put her back on the meds.  We'll have to discuss the long term care for Zoe, on whether the meds will be necessary for months, years, or her lifetime.

No one can prepare you for the NICU.  Surprisingly, over the last week, we've met some of the other moms and dads and have heard their babies stories.  Some have heart defects, some have kidney problems, urinary problems, etc.  I just thank God every night that Zoe stayed in until 38 weeks.  Looking at her now and seeing how she is, I couldn't imagine delivering her over NYE weekend.  She's a peanut already, but looking at the 28-32 weeks in our room, I just feel for those moms.  One of the moms, Tina, whose son, Carter, was moved to the 7th floor, we've become NICU friends more or less.  I'm on the same pumping schedule as she is, so we run into each other a few times a day.  Its hard to truly explain to all of you and our family what we're going through, but its much easier to discuss this with other moms who have similar situations.

The Children's staff has been amazing.  The only downfall is there are not enough chairs to sit on, pillows, or pumping rooms (there usually is a waiting line).  I also think the bathrooms are disgusting on the NICU floor and the cafeteria food sucks.  I yearn for a home cooked meal.  Mike & I are on different schedules do to us splitting up the time at the NICU and then with Zander.  We have about 5 minutes of pillow talk at night and then about an hour in the morning together.  I can't wait for the day that the 4 of us are home together with Zander throwing food on the floor, music playing on the lap top, Coco eating all of Zander's food, Mike cooking in the kitchen and me feeding Zoe.  Soon enough, soon enough.

Here are some recent pictures of our little sweet pea...

And here's some pictures just for fun......Zoe looks so much like Zander when he was just a baby.....can we say twins?