Hope is doing pretty good. She loves nursing and is very happy now that she gets to eat. The docs must agree with the plan now because they're talking about having her home by Christmas. Yay! The question remains as to whether or not she'll go home on oxygen and IV nutrition. She lost 3 oz yesterday, so they're thinking she's going to need to be on the IV at least at night. But today she was back up 2 oz, so I'm hoping we can show them that she can gain weight without it. It sure would be nice to not have to mess with that stuff at home. As for oxygen.... she is so close to getting off of it. In fact, she was off again for about 4 hours yesterday before they had to put her back on. She does okay while she's awake, but her oxygen saturation levels dip when she falls into a deep sleep. I'd prefer to not have her hooked up to anything, but we'll take her home however we can get her. I should also mention that she has had a couple stools without occult blood in them. She'll have one that's negative and then have one that's positive. But overall it seems like it's improving. They haven't done blood work for a couple of days and won't do it again until Monday. We'll let you know how that goes.

I thought I'd post some pictures of Hope with her favorite person, Gracie. Gracie is Hope's physical therapist. It may look like they're just having fun, but it's really work. :)

Please keep praying for the Hopester. Pray that everything comes together over the next few days. Thanks so much!

By the way, I didn't mean to make the doctors out to be bad guys. I know they are trying their best to help my girl. My starting her on nursing just made them nervous. But as I read over my older posts again last night I was reminded of just how much they've done for her over the past few months. We are very grateful for them.