Brief Update

A little news from today:

1. Spinal tap- the results came back this afternoon around 3:30, and were not what we were hoping to get. It turns out that she does have meningitis. In other words, she had or has an infection in her spinal chord. What that means for us is that she is in the hospital for a while longer than we’d thought. She needs to be on the antibiotics for 14 days. The prognosis is good because they put her on antibiotics so quickly after the birth, and the way they figure that she had the infection in her spinal chord is because of her elevated level of white blood cells in the spinal fluid. But even so, it was only moderately elevated, so it’s possible that the infection did little or nothing. Best case scenario is that she’s just fine. Worst case scenario is deafness, or other neurological problems anywhere from epilepsy to cerebral palsy. For now, we’re trying not to think about it too much, except in our prayers.

2. She successfully breastfed tonight! After about four tries in the past two days, and a lot of crying (both baby and mother), she latched on and sucked for just under 10 minutes tonight! We are thrilled at her progress (they grow up so fast!), and hope that this means she’s beginning to feel better. To look at her, you would never think she’s even sick, except that she sleeps most of the time. We did have a nice treat today when she opened her eyes for 10 minutes or so.

3. A note on Kira: she was up and moving around much better today. She still didn’t get much sleep, but she’s feeling more herself and much more like a mother. She’s right on schedule to be discharged on Wednesday, and we’re contemplating our plan for her while Avey’s still in the hospital.

Thanks again for the prayers and support. We hope you can all meet her soon!