Day 2 update

The good news is that Sadie is doing really well. The docs say she's a "champ." She's back on the c-pap machine, which is just an oxygen machine w/ some bubbly water, because she had one little case of apnea yesterday (meaning, she forgets, for just a second, to breathe on her own). Apnea is completely expected for a baby her age and not harmful, as long as the nurses catch it right away, which they did. She is a cute and tiny little bugger, and aside from the one instance of apnea, she really is doing wonderfully. The docs expect to have her off the c-pap today and told us that we can expect to hold her tomorrow. Here are a few shots of mom and dad seeing her for the first time:

And here's one of her first solo shots:

It really used to freak us out to see pictures of babies all hooked up to tubes, but we're realizing that it's different when their your own. It's just not as scary, and the truth is, when it comes to Sadie, there really aren't that many tubes. Most of the things she's connected to are monitors, and the only other thing she's got going on is a little oxygen, so she really is in good shape. Anyway, we think she's pretty adorable.

As far as her sister Zoe is concerned, things are not going quite as well. The doctors are doing everything they can for her but what she really needs is to be on an ECMO machine. That's a heart lung bypass machine that most babies w/ CDH need. Being on ECMO helps the body stabilize so that the doctors can do the surgery they need to do to repair her hernia. Unfortunately, Zoe does not weigh enough for ECMO and she's not stable enough for surgery w/o ECMO. So, the doctors are giving her all the medications they can to stabilize her oxygen and CO2 levels and help her heart function. It's a lot to take for a tiny little baby to take and we have already had to discuss how much intervention we would or would not like them to do should her condition worsen. As people have told us, dealing with CDH can feel much like a roller coaster, and we're finding that to be entirely true. For example, yesterday Zoe was doing great, her oxygen was awesome and she was only on two meds. However, some time last night, her oxygen levels had tanked and they had to put her on six meds. And when we went down to see her today, she had stabilized again, but she's still on lots of meds. Adding to the roller coaster, the nurses came down to tell us to be prepared to say goodbye and then an hour later the doctor told us that we absolutely weren't there yet. So . . . based on the ups and downs, Rich and I are laying low, we're not really taking any visitors at this moment, not because we wouldn't love to see people, but more b/c when we are back in the room we kind of need to decompress and relax. We hope everyone understands.

Oh, and before I forget, here's a picture of little Zoe, she's got quite a few more hook ups than her sister. We know it's shocking to see all of her wires and tubes, but there's not really not that much we can do about that right now:

x's and o's,
debbie and rich