05/10/2007

Well, it's true. I need to go Alanon or Neonatalanon or something. You see, I'm already enabling Emery. Every time someone tells me something good about him, I swear I knew it all the time. Whenever someone tells me something bad about him, I think they are hideous liars and I want to get the villagers, storm the castle, and run them out if society into the forest never to be spoken of again...... Anyhoo - Emery went down another 1 cm of water pressure again today. His blood gas this morning was a CO2 of 44... I think normal is about 20 to 35 for the average 'regular' nonpremature-type person. He really does seem to be getting better. I live my life like the other shoe is going to drop, but he's still here and truckin' along. Last night we went to see him and we didn't get to bathe or hold because the nurse was taking care of a critical baby, but I put him in his boppy pillow and he woke up and really interacted with us for a bit and generally seemed content. Before we left he got terribly fussy, but I think he was in pain. He's actually a pretty sweet, easily consolable baby. A simple position change or bottom pat will quiet him down, but if he's in pain nothing does the trick. It's horrible when it happens, too. Monitors beep at us telling us his respiratory rate is 120 (a baby should be about 30 to 60), his heart rate will go over 200 beats per minute, and his saturations drop so it's already stressful without the dang monitors. I feel so bad for him when he's hurting. I was getting stressed about the fact that he's so doped up all of the time and they aren't sending us home with anything, and then I remembered that he's not coming home soon anyway. I guess that is part of why I wanted to trach him. In some strange way in my mind trach equaled home. It would take a while to get him home even with the trach, a few months even, and he could be home in a few months without it so we just need to let Emery do his thing. Oh, and this doctor is as much of a smart a** as I am. When we were talking to him about the trach I told him I didn't want the kidney stone either, and he said he felt like a waiter taking an order and said "So, you want one baby with a trach, no kidney stone on rye?" What a doofus. Everyone knows I don't like rye bread.