Recovering from Surgery

Today was much better than yesterday--for all of us. For mom and dad, it's as if the universe knew that we had just about reached our tipping point (physically and emotionally) and it decided to give us a little break. For starters, we were greeted this morning by an amazing new nurse for Zoe. The nurses sit by the patient's bed side all day long and they are an incredibly important part of the process. Having a good nurse (or a not so good nurse) can really effect the way the family functions. So, it was a huge emotional relief for us when we met one of Zoe's new nurses because she completely put us at ease. After talking with her for about an hour, we really felt like Zoe was in a good spot and we could actually feel confident about going home to rest for a little while.

That being said, we are a bit apprehensive to report too much of Zoe's progress because we know we are not out of the woods yet. So . . . we will leave it at this: for the time being, she is doing well and hanging tough. Her numbers (saturation, blood pressure, and PO2) look good. She is being weaned off several of her meds and she is staying stable. The docs discovered one other thing they may need to fix with surgery in a week or two, but for the time being it's not a big deal and not causing her any problems. She really is a fighter and we are more and more amazed by her every day, as are the doctors and the nurses. That being said, we are all staying focused on her continuing to overcome all of her hurdles and don't want to get too excited, at least not yet.

We also got a little relief when we went to see Sadie. Her neonatologist was back to work today, after having the weekend off, and he always makes us feel at ease. We discussed Sadie's spitting up and weight issues, and he was very relaxed about it. He said that he was going to add some more supplements to her feeding and he expects her to start gaining weight in no time. While we were talking at Sadie's bedside, we got a little bit more relief when her nurse gave us a suggestion. She overheard us talking to Sadie, telling her that we couldn't wait to kiss her little face and then the nurse offered to lift the head off of Sadie's isolette and let us get in there and smother her with kisses. We haven't really been able to do that yet, so you can imagine how much we enjoyed every single second of it.

Finally, we have noticed that win or lose, our little girls have decided that they are definitely Ravens fans. We're not sure if it's the picture of Ray Lewis we talked about putting up in their isolettes or just a happy coincidence, but somehow Sadie managed to convince the nurses to dress her up in the purple and black today. Apparently she said she won't let any last minute losses to division opponents deter her from her steadfast commitment.