Lily is a little trooper. After days of fighting to get her to stay awake long enough to nurse, she's now feasting like a fat kid on Thanksgiving. Because she's doing so well, they've stopped poking her feet for blood sugars. And it's none too soon, because her poor little feet are black and blue. She now stays awake the entire time she's being fed. Who knew we'd consider it a blessing that she can be fussy? We are hoping she can come home with us tomorrow morning.

When Lily's blood sugars continued to be low, even after receiving dextrose through her IV, breast milk, formula and an extra dose of sugar, they started looking at other things. Turns out her cortisol level is too low (a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar). So yesterday she received 3 doses of cortisone, today she got 2 and tomorrow she'll get 1. And since it's working, hopefully she'll get to come home after the last dose.
When we came down to see her this morning, poor little Lily had an IV in her head. Took at least 3 nurses and an hour to do it. Not long after that, that IV went bad, so they took it out and let her be IV free. But even without the extra dextrose, she's still keeping her blood sugars up. Our biggest struggle right now is keeping her awake long enough to eat. She's kinda lazy. So fun though to see her when she is awake. Her eyes are huge and with her head full of hair, she's just adorable. She made her first internet debut webcaming with the family and she was a hit. She just doesn't remember it since she slept through it.
According to Aaron, she looks like Jasmine in Aladdin because of her big beautiful eyes and dark hair. She doesn't have a magic carpet, but she does have a swaddling blanket. And she doesn't have a tiger, but in the near future we'll take her to the zoo to see one.

Stubborn (but so cute) Lily

After making progress and doing well Lily is backtracking again. Her blood sugar levels and temperature are dropping again. She also refuses to stay awake long enough to eat. They gave her a great hat to keep here little head warm. To help keep her awake we have been showing her pictures of her uncle Lance to scare her a bit. Her reaction says it all. We are hoping she starts to progress again so she can come home with us on Sunday.

NICU

Mom is doing well. She is already up and about. You would never know that she had major abdominal surgery. Lily is still being stubborn. She is now in the Neonatal ICU so they can keep closer tabs on her. She is having trouble keeping her blood sugar levels up which is causing her to have tremors. She is hooked up so they constantly monitor her and have an IV in her to help bring her sugar levels up. If you are planning on visiting if you could schedule a time with us it would be tremendously helpful. Since she is down in the NICU we have to go down to see her. We are down there every couple of hours to feed her so this will help us all catch up from a couple of sleepless nights. We are not sure how long she will be down in the NICU but are hoping she will be able to come home with us when Sara is released on Sunday. Thanks for all your support and prayers.

Love Aaron, Sara, and Lily

Lily has arrived

So even though I was scheduled for an induction thurs evening, Lily decided not to wait that long. Actually, I think she did want to wait. Since my water broke sometime during the night, I came into the hospital and they started me on pitocin. After 12 hours of making very little progress, the dr thought it best to do a c-section. I didn't want that, but it turned out to be for the best. Her head was turned sideways so getting her out wasn't much of an option and it turned out that the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck 3 times. So we feel very blessed that she was born perfectly healthy. She barely cried after being born and staid awake for hours. Then later last night, after she got her bath and all that, she came into our room with us and staid awake for several more hours, without crying once. After we tried going to sleep, she staid up in her little bassinet next to my bed and would occasionally make a cute little sound, as though to remind me she was still there. I have no idea what time she actually went to sleep. So all in all, I have a perfect little baby and we are very blessed that everything went as well as it did.