Another Day Down

This was quite possibly the hardest day so far. Maybe it was the weather that made it so blah. Maybe because it is Saturday and it's been a very long week. Maybe it's just because the situation. But for whatever reason, it was a hard one. I can garantee you that the hardest thing you will ever have to do is let strangers care for your child, newborn or not. To leave your child, newborn or not, at the hospital and come home to an empty house. To lay in bed at night and wonder what your baby is doing and if people are being good to her because she isn't well enough for you to take care of yet.

Sid and I have been very pleased with the neonat and with the nurses. Bailey's nurse today has been her nurse before, but today she was much more open to the concept of us being there. We spent about 3 1/2 hours with her today, the longest amount of time yet. But we still aren't able to hold her. The doctor told me today that we could probably hold her on Monday. She isn't getting a bottle anymore because she was having to work too hard to suck, swallow, and breathe all at the same time. So she has a g-tube in her mouth. Not a big deal, but I wanted her to get better at sucking a bottle and eating from one.

When Sid and I talked to the doctor this morning, he told us that he had twenty babies between this hospital and another hospital and Bailey had been the baby that had worried him the most. That's a hard pill to swallow when Bailey NICU mates are 26 week old twin babies. She should certainly be better off than them, but apparently that isn't the way it works. The doctor said that she straddled the fence on developing pulminary hypertension. Had that happened, she would have been air lifted to UAB and put on ECMO. But Bailey pulled out of it and is now over that hump. We learned all this today and so it didn't make for a good morning. But the day did get better. The doctor decided to leave everything alone for today and let her rest and in his words, "Celebrate" because of the turn she had made.

She still has oxygen in her nose and they are turning it down by 1% every four hours. She is down to like 27 I think and the goal is 22. So hopefully by this time tomorrow she'll be off the oxygen, they'll take the lines out of her belly button and start a normal IV for fluids. She is eating 15 cc's every 3 hours and boy does she get hungry and get ready for it. It will be uped to 20 cc's at some point before in the morning. So she's getting there with that too. She is still under the light but the doctor said she'd probably come out from under that in the morning too.

She knows we are there when we are with her. She got all worked up at one point and nothing I did nor the nurse did would calm her down. So Sid starts lightly rubbing her back and BAM, she quit crying. He'd stop and she'd start again until he'd rub again. This went on for about 5 minutes until she fell asleep. It was comforting to know that we can comfort her even though we can't hold her at this point.

Again, we appreciate your calls and thoughts and prayers and visits. Please continue to pray that our little girl gets stronger and stronger each day and we are able to bring her home soon. I'll update again tomorrow night when we get home.