Camilla seems to be recovering nicely. There is one troubling issue though; her cerebral-spinal fluid samples contain staph bacteria. Typically, infections are treated by removing the shunt and going back to an external drain until the infection is completely cleared. However, she doesn't have any symptoms of the infection, her shunt is new, and there is very little bacteria in the samples, so they are putting her on antibiotics instead. Sadly, the antibiotic she is receiving needs to be delivered intraveniously. This is somewhat complicated for Camilla because she has had so many IVs in her life. She is like a tiny junkie; her veins are all damaged and it is very difficult to find a good one for a new IV. After many tries, they finally got one in today, and if all goes well she can come home from the hospital in a few days. We are staying in the hospital with her. April took this picture with her cell phone.

Camilla is back from surgery. They ended up replacing the whole shunt system.

Camilla's shunt stopped working a few weeks ago. She's having surgery tomorrow to fix it.

The day before April went into labor, we visited the Grand Canyon (for some reason, she didn't want to pose right at the edge). As you can see, April was never very pregnant. I was surprised when the doctor said, "If the baby is going to survive, we need to get April to Albuquerque." It didn't occur to me that survival was an option; I thought that we were losing the baby.

Camilla has a twin!

We found a Camilla-sized car.

Grrr!

On Thursdays we go to the farmers market.

Sunday was Camilla's 4-month birthday. Unfortunately we were too exhausted to do anything clever. People occasionally ask if she is sleeping through the night yet. Although she is technically 4 months old, her "corrected age" is still only several weeks. We are lucky if she will sleep for several hours. She sleeps best laying across my chest, as she is in this picture.

Camilla is doing better. She seems a bit worn out, but she's calm and eating. By the way, the "Camilla archives" have thousands of pictures from the last couple of months.

Camilla is a little sick this week. On Monday she was very fussy and had a mild fever. Since she has a shunt, we always need to watch out for an infection, so we visited the doctor. Her white blood cell count is normal, so it's more likely that she picked up something viral. Now she's having some trouble keeping her food down and hasn't eaten a whole lot today. Hopefully she will be better by the morning or she may need to go back to see the doctor again.

Hi Camilla. Here she is almost eight months ago.

Hi Camilla.

Back in the bonnet

2515 grams (5 pounds, 9 ounces)