January 3rd, 2026
The same doctor was on duty this morning—they must do 16 hour shifts—and she said the Xray looked maybe marginally better. So we’re still on standby. We’re encouraged that she’s still got a lot more fight in her than she did a week ago. But she did reiterate that things could go a lot of different directions from here.
They have decided to discontinue the third and final dose of ibuprofen. Our strategy going forward is to get Ruth’s stomach healed as medicating for the heart valve will no longer be effective at her age. We’ll finish her antibiotics and focus on getting her good nutrition for further growth via IV. It will likely be a while before we can feed her breast milk given the visibly inflamed state of her stomach. Eventually as we monitor her heart valve and as she grows we might start talking about performing surgery to close the heart valve. Long ways down the road though for that—we’re taking things one shift at a time for now.
The surgeon visited to take a look at Ruth. At this time, she doesn’t think anything is critical enough yet to cut her open. Such a procedure at Ruth’s age is very risky. It’s also a better strategy to wait for a section of intestine to die before cutting it out rather than to cut something out that might have recovered.
Thank you very much for your prayers—at Ruth’s age life is very much a minute by minute roller coaster. Ruth appears to be doing better (doctors are careful to tell me that she’s definitely not doing well, but not getting any worse). I think she’s doing a little better—her stomach looks less distended and I want to say that based on her expressions and movements she is in less pain. In fact, I think she smiles occasionally.
We ended up canceling the final round of ibuprofen this morning, given the inflamed state of her stomach. We’ve got a surgeon on standby in case anything major needs to happen, but given the risks it would have to be a pretty major circumstance.
Prayers are greatly appreciated that her stomach heals well and that her heart valve responds to the treatment we were able to give her. We are now past the window where medication has an effect on the heart valve, and surgery when she’s grown more will be the only backup. For now, our strategy is to finish the antibiotics and give her as much nutrition via IV as possible while we wait for her stomach to heal. And continued prayer! Our Lord has been gracious to us.