January 15th, 2026

9:25pm

The most exciting thing for Ruth today was a stomach ultrasound, which she seemed to handle pretty well. Her stomach is still very swollen, along with the rest of her body.

One of the prerequisites for transferring Ruth to a heart hospital is to reduce her dependency on the ventilator. To help with this, she is starting a steroid to boost her lungs. Theoretically, it might also reduce her stomach inflammation and maybe even close her heart PDA, eliminating the need for heart surgery. The reason for not doing this drug earlier is that steroids lower the immune system, and we were dealing with a bacterial infection. Right now, she is most likely over the infection. There is a chance that her stomach will respond badly to the steroid, which could lead to surgery, but taking all the risks into consideration we think this is the best route. Please pray that she responds well to this medication.

Her umbilical stump fell off today—tiniest little belly button you’ve ever seen. They asked me if I wanted to keep the stump! Which I did not. Maybe I’m missing something.