Milk. It does a body good!

Weight check = ?? I don't know but it has not dropped.

This morning when I saw Lilly I was shocked. She was laying limply in her bed and was a ghastly pallor. I was afraid to speak to her because of yesterday so I just sat in a chair and watched her. I kept thinking that must be how Lilly would look close to the moment of death.

But after about an hour or so, Lilly began moving around. She kept putting her fists into her mouth. It was cute but in doing so she was knocking out her oxygen tube and pulling on the feeding tube in her mouth. I could tell she was very hungry (she was still only on IV's for nourishment) and I even heard her tummy rumble. I tried putting my pinkie knuckle in her mouth. Wonderfully that made her very happy. I leaned into her bed for one hour while she contentedly sucked my knuckle and looked at me. Yay!

The doctor found out that Lilly's surgery can not be bumped up from Thursday so he ordered her feedings to begin again. They decided on giving her more calories and making her food more dense. So not as much to fill her tummy but she'll get the nourishment and the calories. (28 calories per ounce of milk done by adding formula to breastmilk.) Again they felt that her feeding was linked to her struggles with breathing. Too much food in her belly makes her heart and lungs work too hard to deal with it. So after Lilly had been sucking my finger for an hour, the nurse came in with a new NG tube to stick down Lilly's nose into her stomach and then hooked it to the milk pump and turned it on. While the nurse was doing this, I took my lunch down to the "family room" where we're supposed to eat. When I came back Lilly was on the milk and so much more content. Before long she looked great! Her color had come back and it was almost like we were seeing her cheeks grow rounder again before our eyes. Soon she was so content she feel into a long peaceful sleep.

If Lilly's temperature and breathing stay stable enough, she will be moved back out of the intensive care unit to the floor she had been on, to await surgery.

We noticed something neat that the hospital does - whenever there is a baby being born, a lullabye is played over the intercom. It's so sweet sound it makes me want to tear up. One of the most wonderful and amazing things in the world is a baby being born!

Another random observation is that probably the most common thing that the staff (and us!) say to Lilly when she's fussing is "I know ... I know ..." It sounds all soothing and understanding but I daresay not one of us really knows how Lilly is feeling. And yet I'm sure I'll find myself saying it again before long.

My last picture today shows Lilly doing some homeschooling. She is studying her lines. I've done this with all my babies - it helps them get better at focusing their eyes. Soon we'll move onto simple black and white drawings of faces. Lilly seems to enjoy looking at her lines as much as her brother and sister did theirs.

I read a couple chapters from Ecclesiastes today to Lilly. After we finished the book, she let me know this was the verse she liked most today: "Anyone who is among the living has hope ..." Ecclesiastes 9:4