September 13, 2008

When this first happened, we counted our time in hours. After the first 48, we began counting our time in days. We have officially reached two weeks. It feels like it has been years. We have learned so much and been so blessed.

Amaree's surgery is scheduled for some time on Monday. We are not sure if it is morning or afternoon. We were hoping to have it done sometime today, now that we know she needs it, we want to get it done so we can keep moving on. They told us that the reason they couldn't do it today, was that there were several other major surgeries scheduled for today, like the ones that take hours and hours. We are grateful that she is doing well enough that she doesn't need that kind of surgery. Although this surgery is scary for us, they tell us it is routine, and that it is short, something like 30 minutes. Hopefully she will start doing better after this.

We had a good day with her. She has been eating 9 ml of food every three hours, so she has her dad's appetite too. She weighed 2 lbs 7 oz yesterday, so she has gained 8 oz since she was born. When they feed her, they give her a Binky so she gets used to the feeling of something in her mouth and the feeling of her stomach getting full. They put a drop of milk on it so she gets used to the taste and smell. She really likes it. The Binky is really tiny, probably smaller than the diameter of a pencil. Actually, we can't think of anything that it is like. It is small. So when we put it in her mouth she tries to suck on it. We were able to take the lights off of her for a few minutes while she was awake and she had her eyes open. She would look at us, and at one point it was almost like a smile. She still responds really well to Andrew's voice. Two of our favorites nurses were working today and they both said that often they can't see resemeblence so early, but with Amaree, she is DEFINATELY daddy's little girl. When she opens her eyes, they can see him.

The nurses also think she has some spunk that is helping her get through all of this. Several of the nurses have commented about how sweet and adorable she is and that they all try to get her for their shifts.