Steady as She Goes

Thursday was a pretty stable day. Amelia's stats were running high, but a lot of that was due to the fact she has outgrown her intubation tube and that 3 new babies were admitted to the pod and things were loud. She wasn't sleeping well. This morning they reintubated her with a larger tube, and we think that will help her out a lot. She was taking her feeds so well they've upped her amount to 5cc (ml) a feed. We saw one diaper last night, and it's fullness was both exciting, and intimidating... it's smaller than my palm, for goodness sakes... I am not going to be happy when she's full sized and putting out full sized diaper messes. Thankfully, Xina has already agreed to changing all of Amelia's diapers.

Her X-rays have been looking better, her lungs are slowly being cleared of the extra fluid, and her blood pressure is consistently within a good range. Her heart beat is strong and stable. They have changed anti-biotics to fight her infection, since the first generic (and less intrusive) one was not effective. The new one is not normally used on children less than 2 yrs of age, but her dosage will be less enough to not cause any other complications other than slowing her urination... and they say it's 95% effective. We'll know in a week, I suppose, if Amelia's the 5% or 95%.

Our second primary nurse is back on the case today, so Xina and I feel better about her daily care with 2 primaries switching off and watching over her... That stability of care is very helpful to Amelia and soothing to us. (Yes, you can have multiple "primary" nurses... it sounds oxymoronic, but more is better).

As I said, Thursday was a little strange from the get go... the new babies meant more beeps, bells, and alarms; more nurses and chatting; some were training and that adds confusion and noise. After dinner, we weren't let in to the pod until half an hour later as the shift change ran overtime because of the new admittances. And then there was more noise, Amelia was touchy and wouldn't let us talk or touch her - and she was de-satting all the time because of the O2 tube leak. But I think she held up better than Xina and I; to us, the noise was "damaging our calm"(Serenity, Adam Baldwin, aka Jane), and by the time we left, we were a bundle of nerves. I felt like I had the Sudafed caffeine shakes.

As we were leaving, we met a couple who had a preemie about the same true age, but born earlier than Amelia. I have spoke of them before on the blog - they have basically lived at the hopsital since their son's birth. He had been getting worse for a while, and the Drs were unable to come up with anything to help... he was just too underdevloped at birth, and couldn't catch up. That day, after 7 weeks, he passed away in his father's arms, calm and quiet. The parents were serene and calm with his passing, having been prepared for it for a few days. We pray for them and their family and young son. But it does put things in perspective.

That wasn't meant to bum anyone out right, now. (It's a blog, so I'm relating the day). Xina and I have have spent over a month now in the NICU and we see babies and families disappear - not only in our pod, but from the NICU - that shouldn't. We are thankful every day that Amelia's birth wasn't a few days earlier; that she is so strong she has beaten some bad odds this far; that she doesn't have more complications than she does; and that we have the support of our family and friends. She's growing, (though most of this week has technically been un-growing) and stable, and her main complication, RDS, does seem to be lessening. In the Macro view, this week has been a huge success.