Bending News

Okay, this is not exactly breaking news because it happened yesterday. As someone pointed out you can see in the most recent pictures that Ellie no longer has a feeding tube in her mouth. The feeding tubes get changed every week to lower the risk of infection. Ellie's O.G. tube was due to be changed and the only reason it was in her mouth is because of the trouble they had been having keeping her nasal cannula prongs in her nose. Well lately she hasn't had many problems keeping the prongs in her nose so when they changed out her feeding tube they put the new one in her nose. The hospital staff prefers them to run through the nose instead of the mouth. Apparently it's less bothersome for the baby. Personally I don't like the idea of a tube entering any orifice so it's hard for me to decide which of the two I would prefer. So if you click on the thumb sucking pic you'll see the full-sized picture. In the full-sized picture Ellie is larger than life (literally) and you can see the feeding tube running right by the breathing tube. The feeding tube has numbers so they can measure ... something. This next bit actually is breaking news. Meanwhile Ellie dropped 10 grams today, putting her at 3 lbs 7 oz and 1550 g. Sad but not tragic. It seems that every day I try to get her to really suck on her pacifier she ends up dropping some weight. But she did just have a big gain and maybe she'll gain it back tomorrow. I guess she figured a two ounce gain was good enough for two days. I'm sure with the 31 mL fortified feedings she'll be packing on the grams again in no time. Please pray for mom and dad as we try to establish more of a routine and balance school and family ... and sleep. It is difficult to tear ourselves away from our little girl, but if we don't then we end up shorting ourselves on sleep. Of course it helps that I have the good fortune of hanging out with two lovely Gramkow girls but it is no substitute for rest.