Making Progress

Molly had a busy day today! When I went to visit her this morning, she was off the overhead bili light and was just using the blanket. Her bilirubin levels were much improved, the doctors went ahead and discontinued the light therapy all together. Since Molly was taking all her feeds by bottle and eating more than the minimum requirement that the doctors had set, she also got her feeding tube out today! So, except for the required nodes that monitor her heartrate, breathing rate, and oxygen levels, Molly is now entirely free of tubes, wires, and needles. Hooray!

She also got her clothing and swaddling privileges back and seemed quite content to be all bundled up. She did get a little chilly today and had to be wrapped up well. We tried nursing again today with much more success -- Molly actually nursed for about 10 minutes. It was bath day again today and Mom gave her a nice sponge bath (Molly might disagree about the "nice" part). To mark her displeasure, she did demonstrate that even little girls can make a mess of things if they decide to pee at inopportune times. Her weight was still down a bit from the previous weigh in -- she's still within the "normal" weight loss range for new babies, although she shouldn't be losing any more weight going forward (and the fact that she had pooped and peed twice right before we weighed her probably didn't help the results :P).

The doctors will check her bilirubin levels again tomorrow. If her jaundice is under control and she can continue to eat well, she should be able to come home soon. We're keeping our fingers crossed!