04/25/2007

"Hi, my name is _______, and I'm an Emery-aholic." I apologize for the time between updates. Yesterday marked 4 weeks off the vent for Emery. This week, Emery's pressures were weaned by a mere 1 cm of water pressure, and he didn't tolerate it very well in that his oxygen requirements went up. They seem to be back into the 50s, and his blood gases and chest x-ray are fine, so they didn't go back up on the pressure. I really was hoping that as soon as Emery was off the vent it would a rather quick process to nasal cannula, but this doesn't seem to be case. Tonight, Erik and I are up here with Emery and it was the monthly pizza party for NICU parents. It's actually been an awesome visit in that we finally got to meet some other parents! We met the parent of a trached baby, and the trach was the absolute last thing they did for this baby, who has been here since last July. This baby actually spent months on CPAP before he was trached. It put things into perspective for us. First, just because Emery is off the vent doesn't mean he's staying off. So many people react so oddly when we say that Emery was intubated for 99 days or that he needed 16 doses of surfactant. The trached baby will be here a year in July. Erik and I are not the only ones on the long, rough NICU road. I think I should also say that when Erik and I nickname the doctors, we do it honestly with respect. We like all of the doctors here. Erik and I got to give Emery a bath and Erik is holding him right now. He did really well. We drugged Emery up with lavendar lotion and he's sleeping very peacefully. Emery's ROP has shown (and this was to be stressed to me) slight improvement, so the plan is to continue to keep his O2 up for another week and see how that eye exam is. I'm not overly concerned about it. Dr. A is aware of all it. We finally realized where most of our desparation comes from. We feel like we're missing out of our baby's childhood so to speak. I missed out on over 14 weeks of pregnancy. I missed out on laboring, and I will never labor ever because I had to have a classical C-section. We missed out on spending the first few hours after birth alone with our child, giving him his first bath, hearing his first cry, and we hear of his growth and development via long-distance telephone calls. Today, we count our blessings. We see so many people come and go and so many babies do well, that we forget there are other families here struggling, too. Emery is doing pretty good. He's finally poopied, actually now 5 times. I don't know what he weighs yet. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost 4 pounds. He won't get weighed until midnight, but he should be over 8 pounds now.....His rate is down to 4, also. They were going to wean to nothing but left him alone today because of the eye exam. Well, I have to go back and smooch him and his chunky sauerkraut stomper legs! Love, Sarah, Erik and Emery