somebody got her belly all closed up today!

Zoe had her third surgery today, and as you can (maybe) tell from the photo, the only thing on her belly right now are two big band-aids! Gone is the orange colored tape, the mountain of gauze and the tube they had put in there. Now she just has a cute as pie little belly that her mom and dad can't wait to snuggle with!

Her surgeon said she did an amazing job, yet again. Now the docs will keep a close eye on her for the next 48 hours and, provided that all goes well, start looking at feeding her and weaning her off of the ventilator. These next two steps are really important because even though the ventilator probably saved her life and the intraveneous "food" she is getting has helped her grow, both tools can have damaging effects if used for too long. The ventilator, for example, can cause something called chronic lung disease, and the TPN, her liquid food, can cause liver damage. Anyway, we're not focused on that right now; rather, we're just focused on how amazingly strong she is and how impressive it is that she has powered through three surgeries like a champ and she's not even three weeks old!

And as for her sister--turns out the scale the nurses were weighing her on was broken so the little one is not so little. While they thought her weight was something to be concerned about, everyone is rejoicing in the fact that she is significantly heavier than we thought she was!