Today, I felt groggy and sad. All the doctors and nurses are so positive about Tess' post-op progress. However, her recovery is not going to be an easy two or three day affair. We've got a lot of small steps to get through before the exciting last stage of eating breast milk and going home.
Today was hard because Tess spent most of the day moaning in pain. It turns out that giving a newborn morphine is a delicate affair. To much pain relief and the baby will stop breathing. Too little, and she will hurt. Because Tess was doing so well on her oxygen level her nurse didn't want to move back to the ventilator that she had immediately after her surgery.
Jon and I spent the day in the NICU rubbing Tessie's cheek, singing songs, reading Winnie the Pooh and generally feeling pretty helpless. We can't pick her up yet from her NICU crib because she just had abdominal surgery.
Now we are back home. It was a big step for Jon to voluntarily leave the NICU during day light hours. It was 7:30 PM, but still, I got to watch the sunset during our drive home.
I'm home now, without my older kids who are spending the week with their grandparents. I never thought I'd be so happy to do laundry. I find normal housekeeping tasks so comforting after days spent in sterile hospital rooms.
I'm making friends in the NICU. Suprise, surprise! My little aposolate of "cheerful conversation" is finding good use.
Could you please pray a special prayer for Tess' roommate Baby Joseph? Little Joseph has hydrocephalus. He's the fifth child of two high school sweethearts. The baby is in great health (he's got the loudest cry in the almost silent, sickly NICU) yet his parents are having a hard time. Just today they found out that the baby's MRI might show that he's already blind.
