Progress

It has been 4 whole days post surgery and what a whirlwind those 4 days have been.

The first day after surgery was just horrible. Baby girl was restless, angry, and scared out of her mind. It was so hard to watch her go through the pain and confusion.

The next day was SO much better. She was so exhausted from the day before that she just had no more energy left to fight. She was able to rest and just seemed much more calm. She kept us on our toes though. When I got back to her ICU room after getting lunch, we realized she was beginning to pull out her central line in her neck. This is a big deal since she was getting the majority of her meds through that line and it could cause some major complications if the line was pulled out completely. Within seconds 7 doctors were in her tiny little room rapidly putting their masks, gowns, and hats on, and spewing out medical jargon that quickly made me very nervous. They had to give Emma sedatives that knocked her out almost immediately.

Thankfully, she hadn't pulled her line out completely so they were able to just rewire it. The whole thing took about 45 min. and by the end of it I felt like I was ready to pass out. I don't think pregnant women are supposed to wear those masks because I felt like I couldn't breathe, but I couldn't bring myself to leave the room.

Once everything was fixed and it was clear that EmarieJoy was fine again, I walked back to the Ronald McDonald house, collapsed into my bed and tears just started flowing.

The incident with the central line reminded me how quickly everything can change. It is so hard to just stand at a distance and trust strangers to keep your baby safe and stable.

It was also a tough day because EmarieJoy just wasn't responding to things the way the doctors thought she should be. In the words of her surgeon, "she just isn't following the rules." She was fighting a fever since coming out of the OR so they were trying to figure out why and it seemed whenever they gave her meds to help her in one area her body would react in a way that it shouldn't. They just couldn't get her fever and her blood pressure under control.

She was kind of leaving the doctors scratching their heads so they started to think outside the box and looking into the possibility that Emma could have something else going on that we weren't aware of, making her body react in the way it was. So they called in an endocrinologist and an infectious disease specialist.

So the first two days after surgery were pretty tough for my little munchkin and maybe even harder on this mama.

Praise the Lord all the tests came back normal the next day, along with a good echo which confirmed that her heart wasn't having any complications from surgery.

Slowly all the things we were most concerned about started getting better. On Friday night her fever broke and all of a sudden her blood pressure started to stay where it should be on its own so they began weaning her off of the many blood pressure meds she was on.

Yesterday and today were full of PROGRESS!!

Before I left the hospital tonight they had just turned off the LAST med Emma was on. Today they were also able to remove the IV in her arm, her catheter, AND her oxygen!!!

All of the prayers for our sweet girl are definitely being answered! Her body did not react well to all the changes after surgery, but slowly it is adjusting and her little body is healing.

Her spunky joyful personality is also returning and it's the best thing ever to hear her laugh and see her smile again.

On Friday I tried holding her, but she was still kind of restless and upset.

She really perked up when she saw her great auntie and big cousins.

Today she FINALLY started to get her appetite back. She ate a little for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!!

She got to go on a couple wagon rides today. She was so happy to get out of her room for a while.

Playing with toys today

 We can't thank each of you enough for remembering our girl in your prayers. God's strength is carrying us through this emotional time and it's been so incredible to watch the healing take place these last couple days. We are really hoping to get EmarieJoy's chest tube out tomorrow and then it's just making sure her body can function on it's own. There's talk of us moving to the step down unit in the next couple days, but it sounds like they may just decide to keep Emma in the ICU so they can monitor her more and just discharge her from here.

My hope and prayer is that we can go home by the weekend. A couple days ago that didn't look possible, but our spunky girl has made so much progress these past couple days :)