Such a happy baby!

This could all be coincidence or purely in our heads, but I swear the shunt surgery has made Emma the happy baby that she was once was. About 3 weeks ago, it became more difficult to keep her happy when she was awake. It was exhausting. We're hoping it's because the fluid on her brain was too high. Now she seems much happier, even though Dr. Troup isn't thrilled with the amount of fluid that has drained from her head after 24 hours. He was expecting more fluid to have drained, and he said she may have to be raised on an incline in another day or two if the amount of fluid hasn't significantly gone down. You'd think there'd be a really scientific way of determining how much spinal fluid is the right amount...nope, just pushing on her soft spot.

My wonderful mother let me have the afternoon off so that I could run a bunch of errands. I didn't get to change Emma's wound dressing like I'm supposed to, but I will tomorrow. In the meantime, though, the wound nurse came to look at it, and she, my mom, and Dawn all thought it looked amazing. My mom took a picture of it, and from what I can tell, it does look a little better than yesterday. We got a little information from the wound care nurse about caring for Emma's wound at home, but nothing is set in stone because a lot can change between now and when Emma goes home in approximately a week.

So about bringing her home - our hospital social worker is getting the wheels turning on getting home health care for wound and shunt care, as well as getting us in-home physical therapy until we can start taking Emma out of the house for therapy. The social worker is also going to help us figure out how to get Emma home in the car - her car seat may not be feasible for a few more weeks.

To be the day after surgery, it was a pretty low-key day for Emma. She gets Tylenol every 6 hours for pain management, and it seems to be working. Russell and I are exhausted, so we're going to try to get home at a decent hour and get some sleep!