The kids have been very slowly making progress. Ella hit a couple major milestones today. She officially weighs over 4 pounds now, and she is actually starting to become chubby. That’s a great thing! Ella also initiated breast feeding directly from Ellen today for the very first time. That was a huge step forward.
Emma on the other hand is having a few problems. Remember the VSD I lamented about a week ago, well its not getting any better. Emma has indeed grown, she’s up to 950 grams (2lbs 2 oz), but its just not enough. The doctors are worried that she is not growing at a fast enough pace. This could imply that her VSD is affecting her ability to grow. Crap. Well, she’s still too small to do an operation on her heart, so the alternative is to put a band, kinda like a rubber band, around one of her arteries to force blood away from lungs. This would require surgery, but it wouldn’t be too invasive. The band would serve to help Emma to grow to 1500 grams (3.5 pounds) at which time, she would be big enough that the doctors could perform heart surgery to correct the VSD. No decision has been made yet as to the course of action we would take. This all has risk, and the crappy thing is that these operations would be performed at Children’s Hospital. Children’s Hospital is only 5 minutes from our house, but its still 10 miles away from Evergreen which is where Ella is. There’s a good chance if we went ahead with this surgery(s) that the girls would be separated for an extended period of time. Ugh.
Like I said, no decision has been made yet, so we are holding our breath that Emma can still grow. One operation is better than 2, and we really want to hold off on the VSD operation until Ella is released from the hospital. That probably won’t happen for at least another 6 weeks.
Oh, we do have more pictures, and they are very cute. However, Ellen and I need a break from the chaos, so we are going to Santarchy today. That should be a lot of fun. I’ll post the pix tomorrow.
Comments
#1 re: Going both directions
safetybtch
12:00:00 AM Saturday, Dec 15 2007
I knew I saw Elle in some of my friend Amanda’s Santarchy shots 
I so miss Seattle!!! 
#2 Another milestone reached
Anonymous
12:00:00 AM Sunday, Jan 6 2008
We have some very good news. The girls are growing a lot! Emma reached 1500 grams last night which is
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