04/08/2007

Happy Easter! Erik and I are up here celebrating with Emery. As we drove up here today I commented on all of the baby animals everywhere. It's spring, it's Easter.. it's time for new life and new beginnings. I was talking to my friend Julie last night and she asked how Emery was doing and I replied that he was good. She got excited because I always say 'he's okay,' or 'he's stable,' but never 'good.' (Please excuse the lack of grammar.) I have been hesitant to even speak the word good in a sentence with Emery, whether it be grammatically correct or not. It always seems that when I get my hopes up they are dashed, but Emery is now 12 days off the vent and 72 hours off the steroids. We were told yesterday that no one ever expected Emery to make it this long off the vent. We all expected progress.. but 12 days? Erik and I got to give Emery his first tub bath today. He didn't really like it, but he peed in the tub and that seemed to genuinely make him happy. We finally got to put baby lotion on him, and now he smells like a real baby and not a rotten hot dog. The other night at dinner an acquaintance came up to Erik and me and asked if we 'go to see our baby every weekend.' Our friend who was eating with us said "wow, it's like people ask you if you're going to see your art exhibit." I will never be able to explain to any of you what it is like to parent a critically ill baby. Most parents, when their children are sick and hospitalized, spend the entire time with their child in the hospital, every minute waiting for their child to recover, and no one faults them for it. Heck, my parents dropped everything they were doing, including a family vacation that had been planned for months, to come up and be with me while I was in the hospital last December, and I'm 35 years old. I was critically ill. No one faulted them for it, yet Erik and I are somtimes faulted for spending time up here with Emery. Believe me, I wish there was some way I could do it all, all of the things that we did prior to this event, but it's just not possible. Because it is Easter, I want this time of year to be of new life and new hope, and I want it to be with my family.. my husband and my son. Like it or not, we are parents of an ill child. I have to accept that. I was told that I won't get over a brick wall by banging my head against it. It's just that I've spent so much time trying to make everyone else understand it (and some of you have been so undertanding and genuinely supportive it amazes us), but I finally realized that our time here in the NICU probably isn't meant to make some of you understand. I think we are here because we are supposedto walk alongside others who have been there or are going through it. On an Emery note, he is now getting blood gases only twice a week. His PCO2 was 56 this morning! They have actually started weaning his rate on the SIMV. His poor little nose is so raw and painful that we hope to get him to actual CPAP soon so that they can do some different things to try to cut down on his irritation. They have told us that a simple common cold will put him back on the vent, but Dr. Winder came by and said that each day he has off the vent is a day that makes him stronger. Okay, that's enough out of me. I'm going to go smooch my baby. He's in his sweatsuit today, and he looks pretty cute!