A Better Day

We were pleasantly surprised when we first saw Lauren today. She looked much better than she did Sunday when we saw her. She is maintaining her electrolytes better and got to get out of her plastic wrap and back into a blanket again. She looks so cute all bundled up. The doctor told us that today, Lauren's heart murmur (due to the PDA) sounded louder than yesterday so he ordered an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. The results came back that she has a large PDA, about 3mm. He is going to go ahead and treat with Indocin to hopefully close the PDA. Usually they start with 3 doses 12 hours apart and they can increase up to 6 doses if needed. Sometimes they see results after the first one or two doses by the murmur being less prominent. There can be side effects from the Indocin, such as decreased renal perfusion and we hope that this does not happen. The doctor said the odds of the Indocin working was 3 out of 4, so we are hoping for those odds. If it does work, hopefully when Lauren goes back on CPAP, she will be able to tolerate it better without getting so tired. There's not too much new going on besides the treatment for the PDA. We loved being able to just see her all wrapped up in her blanket and just be there to hold her hand. It's amazing how fast the time went by just holding her hand and staring at her. I think we could stay there all day just staring at her. Adam had his head laying down by hers with his eyes closed resting and I think she really liked it. Her oxygen saturation actually went up while he was doing it. Maybe coincidence...but I like to think she just liked having her dad resting next to her.
Oh...we also got a peek at Lauren's right eye!