A Good Weekend

We told Madeleine about the fundraising efforts for the March of Dimes and the picture on her right was her reaction. Actually, this was her reaction when we showed up at the hospital today-- seriously. She was asleep when we showed up at her bedside and when we raised the top to her incubator, she stretched out and then looked around with her eyes wide open.

As you can tell from the tone of this posting, Madeleine had a really good weekend. She continues to breathe well, her heart seems to be stable, and she began eating this weekend. The eating is the best news but it comes with the typical NICU warning: it is going to be very slow. Previously, she was eating 0.5 cc's/hour. This was considered conservative but is no where near as conservative as she is now getting 1 cc every six hours. (less than a teaspoon/day) The good news is that she has not had any residual milk in her stomach (they check before they feed) indicating that Madeleine's intestines may ge working again. They are taking an X-Ray tomorrow and with the contrast fluid still in her-- a small amount remains-- this should tell us how the intestines are doing. Madeleine also passed a milestone this weekend: she weighs 3 lbs! Yup, she's still tiny but she is slowly putting on weight which is yet another good sign.

With all of that good news to report, we were floored this evening when we checked the progress of fundraising on our March of Dimes site: www.marchforbabies.org/madeleineeva. Thanks to everyone that has donated already-- we're continually amazed by the support everyone has provided. We initially set a goal of $300 but we've already blown past that amount. The new goal is $1000. I don't know what is realistic, so if we beat that, we'll just raise the goal again. Thanks again for everyone's support.

We hope everyone has had as restful weekend as us and you're looking forward to the week and to hearing more news regarding Madeleine. Take care,

Kirsten and Brent