a step backwards ...

Things have been going so well. Emily is back up over 4 lbs (4 lbs. 0.3 oz. to be exact) and seems to be a growing baby girl. Except for this jaundice that doesn't seem to want to go away. The docs decided to run further blood tests to see if something else could be going wrong. The tests showed she is pretty severely anemic. I'm not an expert, and really all I heard was that something was wrong so I can't really explain it. The tests showed she has about half the red blood cells she should have and she isn't producing them fast enough on her own for some unknown reason. They couldn't do further testing because she didn't have enough for them to safely draw more blood. So, she had two blood transfusions today. The nurse (and the books and websites) all say anemia is common in preemies and a transfusion will usually do the trick but the doc wasn't so quick to calm our fears. She seemed concerned by what could be causing the anemia and her slow regeneration rate (or something like that) and openly said she was stumped because Emily seems to be a stable and strong growing little girl. The doc said she hopes it is just something 'transient' that will be resolved by the transfusion. She will have some follow-up testing done Tuesday and they're going to just watch it but we will probably have to wait a week before we know more.