You'd think NICU 2 is a good thing...but you'd be wrong.

Today started out on a good note and definitely ended on a sour one. Emma has been eating really well, and I spent a lot of quality time with her. She stayed awake for a while this afternoon and was perfectly content looking around, moving her arms around, and making cute noises. I have only heard her cry once a few days ago (I blogged about it), and other than that, she has been the perfect baby...and no pacifier needed!

The good news first: Dr. Troup came by to see her this morning before my mom and I got to the hospital, and he told the nurse that her incision looks "marvelous." He felt her head and isn't any more concerned about the fluid on her brain than he was on Friday. His rough, tentative timeline for her is this: stay on her tummy for the rest of the week, lay on her back at the end of the week and over the weekend, monitor how the incision is when she's laying on her back, and then bring her home early next week. Later in the afternoon, the nurse told us that Emma would be moved to NICU 2, which is where babies go who are doing really well. Sounds like good news, right? WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Russell and I came to see Emma in her new location tonight. It is a semi-private room with no curtain to separate her from the baby who is 5 feet away from her. Our daughter has a large incision that we are trying to protect from infection, yet she is sharing a room with another baby and 4 other people who belong to that baby. They have to walk past Emma to get to their baby, too. In NICU 1, Emma was opposite the main doorway and a good distance away from other babies in her own little room, just without a door - for the specific reason of limiting other people's contact with her. To protect against infection. Duh.

The other baby is horribly fussy and cries a lot. Loudly. If that baby upsets my good sleeper and prevents her from sleeping and...dare I say it...MAKES EMMA CHRONICALLY FUSSY now that she's recovering from major surgery without pain medication, I'm going to blow a gasket. We haven't been tiptoeing around her, and we have been able to talk and laugh without phasing her a bit. But our talking and laughing is no match for another screaming baby 5 feet away. Then there's the pacifier...the only reason she has needed a pacifier was to stop hiccups. Then you take it out, and she's fine. I walk in tonight, and there she is with the pacifier in her mouth. I took it out twice and (1) watched her come to the brink of tears twice and (2) watched her heart rate go over 200 for only the second and third time in 7 days. (It's supposed to stay below 200, and hers is usually around 140 to 180. The alarm starts going off once it reaches 200.) The icing on the cake is that I didn't see the other baby's mom or her sister wash their hands or use the antibacterial gel a single time. Not once. Changing a diaper, etc. and NO HAND WASHING. The nurses and families in NICU 1 use the antibacterial lotion and wash their hands religiously, as do we.

So maybe I'm being an overprotective mom already. But when my baby spends her first 7 days with no tears, no pacifier, and recovering from major surgery in remarkably good spirits, I think I have every right to be upset about another baby and its family disrupting this progress. ESPECIALLY if her incision gets infected. I'm going to have a conversation with the neurosurgeon tomorrow because I don't know if he knows that they moved her - moving her is the NICU doctors' call.

Russell phrased it this way: It's like moving from the Ritz-Carlton to a semi-private room without a curtain at Motel 6.

Today's picture is of a peacefully sleeping Emma, back when we were blissfully unaware of the Bates Motel to which we were about to be moved. The hospital shirt they put on her is on backwards, in case you're confused about which side is up! And yes, there's a hole in it. Nice, huh?