Hello Everyone,

A lot of people have let me know how much they appreciate the daily updates about Lorena I have been sending out each night. So I have decided to continue this. These will also be nice to add to her scrapbook in the future. Further more it is these reports of good days for Lorena that we so prayed for.

Lorena is 10 days old today and we are so thankful for an other peaceful day of healing with Lorena. When we called in around 5 AM, Lorena had a bit of a fussy time around 3 AM and she was given some Tylenol to settle her but she did well with the feedings all night. No spitting up and her stomach is able to handle the feeds very well. When we came in at mid morning her feedings were already up to 18 ml/cc per hour. Throughout the day her feedings went up to 24 ml and then later to 28 ml and in the afternoon she was at 32 ml per hour. Wow, we never expected the feedings to go so well and so fast.

We are thankful that it was her liver rather then her stomach that was up into the umbilical hernia/omphalocele as it is for this reason that she is able to handle the feedings much much better then most other omphalocele babies. This is a true answer to prayer.

All day Mom, Dad and Janita took turns holding her and she was sleeping most of the time in our arms. What a wonderful day of soaking in this little miracle. All of the 1st week we had been itching to hold her close but got very little opportunity to do so. However sometimes the emotions would still come up but now of happiness that we still have our little girl, that we can cuddle her and hold her close. How do we begin to thank our Lord?

Feedings are going so exceptionally well, that in late afternoon they started to do bolus feeds. This means that now she is no longer being fed continually but rather every other hour kind of like the real feedings. She is currently getting 38 ml every 2 hours. It takes 1 hour to feed her this amount and then she gets nothing for the other hour. So far she has only had 1 little spit up so this too is going well.

Mom and dad have been living on 6 hours or less of interrupted sleep per night now for 10 days and it is catching up to us. I have not had a chance yet to have any day time naps either but today for the 1st time I was able to nap for a 1/2 hour and this sure helps a tired body. Also because we now have a laptop in the hospital I have decided to type up these updates in the hospital and send them to my home email so that when we get home I only have to add the pictures and send it out quick. This way we should be able to get some more episodes of sleep between the pumping. I am afraid I will not be able to keep up with Lorena now as she is using more and more milk. They are planning to use a bit of formula milk if needed as it is important to keep her well nourished.

Her weight this morning was not bad after 10 days. She was born at 6 pounds 15 ounces and now she weighs 6 pounds 11 ounces.

Today we took some pictures of the back of her head to show you the wonderful long black hair she was born with. I am convinced that what some say is only an old wife's tale is the truth. They say if you have a lot of heartburn when you are pregnant that baby will have lots of hair. Believe me I was burning up with heart burn throughout my pregnancy and the only thing that would help to sooth this was milk. So I went through liters of milk per day and even carried my own bottle with me when we went to visit others as I did not want to drink all their milk. At least now I know what I had all the heartburn for…….for a beautiful little head of hair.

How we thank our Lord for these beautiful peaceful days of healing for Lorena. To God be all the praise and glory.

Love Lodewyk, Rena, Janita, Jeremy & Lorena