On approach, not yet short final!

Erica's had a few amazing days with Mercy - we're getting close!! Here's what she has to say about where we are right now:

Yesterday was a BIG day: Mercy’s central line was taken out!!!! We are thanking God and celebrating!!!

When the nurse rolled away her IV pole, it felt so surreal. She still has her NG tube, and the monitoring lines, but for the first time in her life she has zero accesses to her circulatory system. We are praying she will continue to not need anything via IV! 

Mercy is tolerating her feeds more or less ok. She has some emesis, and every now and then a scary big one. Her gag reflex is extra sensitive and having an NG tube tickling the back of her throat doesn’t help- sometimes irritation from the tube makes her throw up too. Her weight gain is slow. We are 5ml per feed away from full feeds at her current weight, and I’m grateful that the docs are cautious about rushing forward on upping her volume, since added volume can cause more emesis with her slow digeative tract (and then we lose ground!). 

She has begun to enjoy nursing after a long, long, long struggle to get there. I was uncertain if she’d ever take to it after how many months of bad oral input she has endured. This is HUGE, and an answer to prayer that I am deeply thankful for!! 

Another element of Mercy’s health that we haven’t talked about much on here is her vision- specifically Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). Mercy has ROP at a stage 1 still (it’s been like this since November). Simplified, this  means that her retinal blood vessels have yet to fully reach across her entire retina. Every week she gets an ROP exam from ophthalmology, and it is extremely painful and scary for her. We both cry through it each Tuesday morning. This week her doc said that her eyes look “annoyingly stable at a stage 1”. Please pray that it resolves by her exam next week! We would love to avoid treatment for it which would permanently scar over some of her retina, and for the awful exams to not be needed anymore. And….we would love for her vision to be perfect and not have reduced peripheral vision like she has now because of her ROP. 

Mercy’s hemangioma site has healed so so beautifully!!!! She has a linear scar that should fade into being almost unnoticeable. Just two days ago, her plastic surgeon said we could stop putting dressings on it and just moisturize it daily. Wow. What another amazing step forward!! She’s had some kind of dressing on that arm for months now. So thankful!! 

As I’m sitting here holding Mercy and typing up this post, a group of nurses gathered around our little NICU friend’s door just down the hall, and sang their sweet going home song to her family. I can’t help tearing up- I am so thankful our friend is going home today. And so hopeful that soon, very soon Lord willing, we will get to hear that song, say our goodbyes here, and go home with our precious girl. 

To that end, ways to pray:

-that Mercy will stop throwing up altogether beyond normal small spit up amounts

-that she would thrive on her goal feed amount of 65ml every 3hrs

-that her ROP would resolve

-that we could go home very very soon!