Serenity: 5 days old (gestation age: 25 weeks)

Hello all! I thought I would update everyone again, as I know many people are still praying for our family and sweet little Serenity Hope. (Thank you, again, by the way!)

I was able to spend a good chunk of the day with our baby girl today. It was nice. Being there for a longer period of time allowed me to catch them in the act of taking out one of the lines that was inserted into her umbilical chord. Although, I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to medical things, so I had to look away a few times.

To update you all on Serenity's condition based off my last post:
They found some suspicious looking things in her blood panels along with an elevated white blood cell count, so they put her back on some antibiotics to make sure there isn't an infection and to hopefully help keep her from getting one.

In my last post, she was also getting very small amounts of colostrum--which she was doing very well with at first. Today, when they "pumped" her stomach to see how she was doing on it, they found some yucky stuff. So, they have stopped giving her colostrum for now, as her stomach does not appear to be ready for it just yet.

Yesterday they had taken the breathing tube that goes down her throat (ventilator), and were going to put her on a ram cannula, but the nose piece was too large for her, so they put her on a sipap machine (similar to a c-pap) instead. However, with the sipap her CO2 levels were too high, but thankfully they were able to find a ram cannula nose piece small enough to fit her, and were able to switch to that. She does pause her breathing from time to time, as with preemies, sometimes they literally forget to breathe. But the nurses keep a close eye on them and pat there back or chest to remind them to breathe. At first this sounded scary to me (which I guess it still does), but the nurse said it is very normal, and that even some 30-weekers still forget to breathe, that sometimes it takes them a while to grow out of it.

Even though all of this sounds much worse than how she was doing just a day or two ago, Serenity has still come so far and is doing extremely well! In fact, on my way out of the NICU last night, the couple in the unit next to Serenity stopped me to rave about how incredibly well she is doing for her age. I mentioned to them that I had been thinking the nurses were just being nice, that they probably tell all of the parents that their baby is doing really well--which according to the couple, that's not the case. Serenity, in their opinion, is doing extremely well. I cannot express how happy this made my heart. To know that there have been hundreds (maybe even thousands, when I really think about it) of people praying for our little girl, and then to know how well she is doing, is a huge blessing to my heart.

I would like ask that everyone continue to pray for her, as she does still have a long way to go, even though she is doing so well. Thank you in advance for taking the time to pray for our little girl. It means so much to Ryan and me.