What is THAT?!

This morning when we walked into sweet, sleeping Emary's room, we encountered two new "situations" - Emma sleeping on her side, propped up by rolled up blankets, and a watery, runny incision. The nurse thought she'd be comfortable with a change in sleeping position, while it still allowed the incision to be exposed. Great in theory, disastrous in practice. Emma was frank breach for a good part of my pregnancy, meaning her feet were over her head. So what does she do when you give her the chance now? Draw her feet and legs up as much as you'll let her, which puts pressure on her lower back incision. So there she was, on her side, bending where the incision is, with one leg in particular much higher than the other one. Then things went from bad to worse...as I blogged yesterday and Sunday, the incision has opened up into a pretty substantial hole right in the middle, but we've been fighting it by putting peroxide on it. The peroxide fights infection and also hardens the tissue - the nurses and doctors use the word "granulate" I think. I don't actually know what that means, but I think it has something to do with the skin hardening and healing. Anyway, not only was Emma on her side, but the nurses had also decided that she probably didn't need the peroxide anymore. WRONG. Because she hadn't had a peroxide treatment in a while, something was running out of the incision...first of all, gross...second of all, we had never seen that before. The NICU docs came by not long after that, and they were very concerned about it as well. They got in touch with Dr. Troup right away, and he said that we needed to continue with the peroxide. DUH. Why would you just stop following a doctor's orders just because you've been doing it for a few days? So anyway, we treated it and 4 hours later it started looking the same way - leaky and runny. We treated it again, and voila! It looks like it did yesterday. We're looking for forward progress from day to day, but I guess you could call it forward progress from this morning. Sigh.

Dr. Troup came by at the point during the day that the incision looked fairly dry, so he of course wasn't worried about it. Kind of like when your car's making a funny noise on the way to the repair shop but doesn't make it again until you're on the way home. He still didn't know when her shunt surgery would be, but he wasn't worried about it being as late as Friday because Emma's going to have to stay longer because of this horrid incision situation. We were making such great progress. We are just praying that it doesn't get infected. If it gets infected, our stay in the NICU could double from 3 weeks to 6 weeks.

Emma's been eating like crazy. She doesn't spit up (well, she did tonight because she ate too fast and burped too fast), and she doesn't spill a drop! She is knocking the nurses' socks off with how much she eats. I think a lot of the other babies in the NICU don't eat as well as she does. Russell and I both have experienced a lot of frustration with the normal baby stuff - eating, changing clothes, burping, changing diapers, but not for the reasons that most moms and dads feel frustrated. We feel heartbroken, desperate, frustrated, and annoyed all at the same time when we're by ourselves trying to do all those things. We can't just turn her over or prop her up or bend her however we need to. Every move we make is done with consideration of the incision, which makes all of those things terribly difficult. We're just ready to live our lives with a child who doesn't have an incision that stretches from one end of her back to the other. She will most likely have other problems to contend with later...those will be frustrating as well. But for those of you who are parents already, you know how difficult those first couple of months are with that first child. Now imagine doing all the things you have to do to care for your child...but doing them all with your child living on her tummy and being largely immovable.

Yesterday a resident told us that he noticed the index card I had posted over Emma's crib that refers to God's plan and design for each of us. He stated that he was a Christian, too, and he hoped that it was ok that he came by and prayed over her yesterday morning around 8:00. I, of course, said that was fine, and we had a great conversation about our faiths. When we were discussing Emma's incision today with all the residents and the head NICU doc, this particular resident stated that when he came by at 8:00 THIS morning, it was much, much drier...how much do you wanna bet he came by and prayed over Emma at 8:00 again? God is surrounding Emma with His children. There's something comforting knowing that someone is placing his hand on her head and praying for her health and healing when I can't be there.