SGP continues to do well. She now weighs 2lbs 6.6ozs! She's starting to "fill out" and get a tiny bit of chunkiness to her. She now has little bitty baby fat neck rolls, and tiny thighs you just want to squeeze! She's still tiny mind you, but she's starting to look more "baby" like.

Her A&B episodes are improving. They have increased her caffeine dosage to help with that, since she grew out of her last dosage. All IV's are out (for the moment) and she's no longer on antibiotics. For now she just eats, sleeps and poops!

She's eating 9cc's every hour for 3 hours, and is back down to 24 calories per feeding. They decreased her caloric intake because the 28 calories was just too much for her tiny belly. It was giving her gas and making her belly puffy. So back down to 24 we went, and she tolerated it better.

She's pooping like a champ now. No more extra help needed!

She had her standard Monday morning chest x-ray yesterday, and it came back with a good report! It's still "hazy," but it's slightly improved from last week, but still consistent with RDS. So prayerfully she's growing out of her RDS and it will continue to get better.

She will be getting a visit from the eye doctor either this week or next week. He will be checking for Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), which is common in preemies. ROP is an eye disease that is thought to be caused by disorganized growth of retinal blood vessels which may result in scarring and retinal detachment. ROP can be mild and may resolve on its own, but may lead to blindness in serious cases.

All preterm babies are at risk for ROP, and since she had a very low birth weight, this is an additional risk factor. Too much extra oxygen can also contribute to ROP.

During this first visit, the eye doctor will put drops in her eyes, and look into the back of them with a special tiny instrument - I assume like at the big people eye doctor - though this will be done in her crib. He will be looking for the disorganized blood vessels in her retinas, as well as scarring. There are 5 stages of ROP, with stages 1-3 being less severe.

We are prepared that she's got some form of ROP given her age at birth and birth weight. But we're prayerful that it's only stage 1 or 2. She'll get eye exams frequently now, because if she has ROP, it will likely progress (though it can disappear on its own). They will need to keep an eye on her retinas, to be sure they don't start to detach.

If they detach completely, she will be blind. If they catch it before it detaches (which they likely will if we get to that point), they will give her tiny laser eye surgery to reattach her retinas, and all will be ok.

Laser surgery is absolute worse case scenario. Well, I guess absolute worse case is that she's blind. But from what I can tell, her eyes are working just fine. She is able to track voices with her eyes, and my finger if I put it very close to her eyes (since her vision is like 20/400 right now). So we'll just wait for the eye docs report and go from there.

Please be in prayer that her eyes are amazingly PERFECT and she has no problems with her retinas or any other part of her eyes. Pray that the doctors will be surprised by the good health of her eyes, and be forced to look on God's amazing abilities as the only explanation!

Also, in case you're wondering, they won't test her hearing until she gets a bit older. She's just now developing visible ear canals, so her ears are still forming. But I can assure you that she can hear! She opens her eyes at the sound of mine and Owen's voices, and gets visibly irritated when her neighbor's monitors beep for too long.

In other news, we're picking up her furniture today!!! I'm super excited to finally see it, because it picked it out from a catalog. Since I haven't actually been able to lay my hands or eyes on it, I'm kind of nervous about it! I hope I picked out the right thing for her! And I hope it all fits into her bedroom!! I can't wait to finally get her bedding into her crib and start decorating her room!!

Also, I went to Baby Palooza this weekend. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be, so we didn't stay long. It was a bunch of vendors like hospitals, children's gyms, photographers (check out my favorite children's photog...Abernathy Photographics...in my Links to Love section!!) and the like. I don't really need any of that kind of stuff right now, so I made a beeline to the VERY few clothing vendors and bought the cutest pink smocked dress for SGP! (Pictures later).

I'll post pics of Sayla Grace (and her new dress that she won't be able to wear until she's 12!) shortly. First I've got to finish clearing out her room before Owen and Granddaddy Johnny (Owen's dad) get back with her furniture!!