Steady As She Goes.

Happy weekend, all!  This is Robert posting from Chrissy's computer.  Not an awful lot to report today.  We're making small steps each day that, when you step back and look where we are from week to week, show lots of good progress.  Here's where we are now: Clara's down to 1.25 Liters on her O2 volume, and has stayed at or below 30% oxygen mix for the last 24 hours, so she's tolerating weaning down her supplementary oxygen quite well so far.  She's VERY slowly weaning off of her sedatives, and I would bet we've got another week or two at least until she's drug-free.  Clara has officially been downgraded from "Critical Condition" to "Intermediate Red" as of today; that's more for insurance billing than anything, but we like the sound of it.  Chrissy and I are starting to get pretty antsy about getting her home.  We know it'll happen when it happens, but we can't wait to be able to snuggle this little girl in the comfort of our own house, without having to drive across town, without people everywhere and alarms going off all the time, and without six different tubes/wires dangling off her and getting tangled everywhere.  It's great that our battles now are with feeding and weaning off of drugs instead of the battles we were having a few weeks ago to keep Clara alive, but having a child in the NICU is exhausting, even when she's on the right track.  So please pray for God to hasten the day that Clara gets to come home to us.  

Also, please keep little Penelope in your prayers as well.  Penelope is another little girl with CDH who was born a few weeks after Clara.  She had her surgery to repair her hernia on Thursday of this week.  Those of you who have been following the blog for a while will probably remember that Clara's toughest and scariest times were after her surgery.  Now Penelope and her parents will potentially be facing struggles that we know all too well.  Pray for them as you have for us, with the knowledge that God does still perform miracles.

Here are some images from today: