Baby Rehab

Another great day today, and I feel like it's pretty safe to say those scary days are behind us. The docs said the PPHN has resolved, Maycee is breathing room air oxygen with just a little help through the nose, and her final kidney scan came back completely normal. We got to snuggle her all day today and it's amazing how time just flew by. It really is true that time flies when you are having fun. It seemed to go backward when we were going through the rough days.

So to get out of here and come home, Maycee has to go to rehab and she says no, no, no. She apparently likes her morphine, as most babies do that have had to be on it for more than a week. We now are in the process of weaning her off it and getting her to learn to feed from a bottle/nursing. We really want her to exclusively nurse, but it tends to get babies out of the NICU sooner if they bottle feed too. Hopefully she will be a quick study, but the morphine tends to make her a bit drowsy, so we shall see. The lactation consultants are very pro breast feeding and are excellent to work with. Here's Dad getting some bottle practice in.

I cannot explain how it feels to hold my baby after just watching her struggle for the last week. She is actually acting like all my other babies. She even dreams and "talks to the angels", a saying we have when they are making sweet faces while they are asleep. She tends to sneeze a bit more than our others, but that will subside when she gets that nasal cannula out. We are so grateful for even the smallest bits of normalcy we can get with her. She is so special to us, as are our other children, and we are so blessed to have her on the mend. Thanks again for all your prayers and efforts to help our family...they really have worked!!

Another huge event of the day was the removal of Maycee's arterial line through her umbilical cord. The doc's used this line as a way to draw blood gases, but she doesn't need that anymore. This means we can do a lot more hands on with her as she is not tied down with a tube running through a major artery.



Jolee has been able to hang out with us at night at the hotel and it has been really good for all of us. She definitely has missed her mom and dad, and we enjoy snuggling with her at night. Thanks to Auntie and Grandma Lynn for watching her during the day. Dad took her swimming in the hotel pool, and she loved it. Naturally, she preferred being the hot tub a bit more, but it was great watching her splash around with Daddy.