Easter Blessing

Zoe's latest echo shows increased cardiac strength and activity. It's performing better. Doctors will continue to monitor her heart by looking at her many many monitors hooked up to her. Our hope - and your prayer, please - is that her heart continues to perform well and gets back to pre-birth form.

Again, she'll still need the surgery in a few months. The heart trouble they were concerned about yesterday was not a product of Tetralogy of Fallot.

Her breathing tube has been removed. Zoe hasn't needed it. As strange as it sounds but unless she's not breathing, she doesn't need the tube. The ventilator hooked up to the breathing tube was supplying room air...not specially oxygenated air or anything.

So, if you saw her today, you'd see her under some special lights - she's a little jaundiced - and you'd see her mouth for the first time. Well, there's a little tiny capillary tube for feeding her. And a bunch a bunch of wires and lines for monitoring and measuring.

Zoe's punkiness is obvious. This morning i tried to get her finger from where she had all lodged it - under a piece of medical tape - and she erupted. If the breathing tube wasn't in at the time, the whole floor of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit would have paid.

All better? No. Fatal problems? Well, she's breathing. And peeing and pooping and very irritable if you try to move her fingers. So she's definitely way ahead of day 1.

If you were following the live blog, you saw this situation happen: we'd be elated about good news, lose our balance, and topple to the ground when we got some bad news. Gotta keep our feet under us in order to fight. So...we win this round. You all, your prayers were the strength of a little girl who hasn't eaten a crumb or drop of food yet.