Seventh Smith

We were told this morning that we would "graduate" out of ICU to a
regular recovery room. Throughout the morning however, Evie had
several episodes with the arrhythmic heart beat that they detected a
couple days ago. They performed an EKG when her heart rate elevated
above 215 bpm. Her heart is essentially "short circuiting" and
causing it to "fire" offbeat. They gave her medication to reset her
heart which got it back on track. Throughout the day she's had
several incidents when they've used different methods to reset the
heart rate.

Another concern has been her calorie intake. Its hard to measure how
much breast milk she is getting and she's pretty averse to the bottle,
so they reinserted the NG tube to feed her through her nose into her
stomach. Half way through the feeding, she started choking and
gagging. We asked them to stop the feed and give her a break. As
soon as she settled a bit, they restarted the feed and apparently
topped her off. She was given too much at once and started vomiting
and the concern now is that perhaps she aspirated some into her lungs.

They still were willing to move us to regular recovery where we would
be under close observation. The nurses packed up her little crib with
portable oxygen and monitors and started rolling. We made it all the
way to the exit door of the ICU when Evie's blood oxygen levels
dropped to a level that they were concerned about. We were wheeled
back to our spot in the Intensive care Unit where she remains under
observation.

We can look back over this whole saga and see a glimpse of Gods
eternal perspective and split second timing...Izzy's complications at
birth that led us to come back to the US to birth Evie...Her being two
weeks post date, allowing her gain weight and be strong for all that
would transpire in her first days of life...prompting to take Evie to
the ER two weeks ago when it would have been easy to wait till
morning...C changing his ticket so that he was not back in the
Ukraine when all this happened...

..all of this gives us assurance that God is indeed in all these
details and the timing and our trust in Him is being stretched again
to see His plan even when it doesn't coincide with ours. Please keep
praying for our little girl!