Week 6 in the NICU

Aurélie is 6 weeks old and is so alert and active! The nurses keep telling us how “bright” she is. As far as the belly button, she has healed from her first surgery! It looks amazing and you could never tell her intestines were on the outside of her body! 

We haven’t started feeds again as Aurelie has had ample amounts of bilius coming out of her belly (meaning her body just wasn’t ready to digest milk). The surgeons wanted to wait until she was 6 weeks before doing more tests to allow her body time to heal and grow (in hopes that the intestines would find more room to move as she got longer). Now that she is 6 weeks, they have started the tests. She had an x-ray this morning which showed her small intestine was still very swollen. With that, they scheduled her in for another contrast study (tube up the bottom end, with fluid injected and followed on monitor) to see if there are any new blockages or narrowing. If during this study, the fluid doesn’t pass through easily, there is a good chance Aurelie will need a second surgery. 

It is all so confusing and difficult to understand because she does have the occasional bowel movement, gas and her belly has great bowel sounds. It only seems logical that there are no blockages.. her body is just unable to digest the milk that she needs to survive and grow. 

We are so excited to get her home and be able to feed her all of the milk she wants! More updates will come after this long week of tests and hopefully we will have answers and solutions❤️