Day 21-Milk and Aspirates Up!

**A quick note about the structure of the Blog....it was getting very long so I've had to archive the older posts, they are still there but you will need to click on the dates in the right hand side tool bar to access the older posts.***

Olivia will be 3 weeks old in the early hours of the morning and what an eventful life she's had already and technically she still shouldn't be with us until this Saturday when her birthday was originally calculated .

We've had some good news and bad news today, I'll start with the good.....

The surgeons were very happy with Olivia's progress over the weekend and as we predicted they decided to increase her feeds to 15mls every three hours. We were really pleased at this news and even more happy when the nurse told Lisa that if Olivia could get to 45mls and be breast feeding then all being well she wouldn't need to be transferred to Bath RUH to finish her care. This is a great target for Lisa and Olivia to aim for and for me to help support them towards. 

Now the bad.....

The increased milk levels have coupled with an increase in her aspirate/bile levels in her stomach.  Yesterday we had a 4mls over the whole day, today it was averaging 15mls before every feed, we have everything crossed that it is just because the milk level has gone up so the stomach is producing more fluid before it gets used to it.  Looking back at the charts from when the feeds were raised to 10mls a similar thing happened so let's hope that it will stabilise tomorrow otherwise we are staring down the barrel of stopped feeds at worse or reduced feeds at best.

Sleeping on Mummy

On a lighter note Lisa met up with her sister Jess and good friend Kathryn in Bristol for a break and lunch. Lisa is truly amazing spending all those hours in the hospital on her own every day and yet she still manages to give me a smile and kiss when I get there every evening.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support, cards, flowers, gifts and for reading the Blog! It's so nice to know that people care and take a genuine interest.  Everyone thinks (as we did) that everything will be fine during pregnancy and your baby will be healthy and back at home with you after a couple of days.  When that doesn't happen you need to keep your head up, keep believing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and sometimes you'll just have to walk for a little bit longer to feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

J xxx