Our Little Princess: Day 5

May 18

I woke up today feeling the best I have felt so far; I was able to get up and get ready with minimal pain.  I thought this might just be from excitement; I was having two friends from home come visit today.  I was looking forward to them coming and having some "girl time".  They showed up around 9 and I was able to show them a little of the Ronald McDonald house where we are staying.  We soon left for the hospital so I could show off my sweet Hannah.

I still asked Ethan to push me in a wheelchair because I wasn't feeling THAT much better.  We showed up at the NICU and they took turns coming in to meet Hannah (only two people are allowed at the bedside at once).  It was a little strange because all we could do was stare at her sleeping.  It is so different when I had Jack, when I would "show him off" to my friends they were allowed to hold him and play with him.  It was just a very different experience to show off Hannah.  I still swelled with pride, I just felt bad that they couldn't hold her.

Thanks Sarah for the picture

We left the hospital to go have lunch 30 minutes away; it was so weird getting off the hospital campus.  The farthest I have been is two blocks away at Ron's house.  It was nice to take a break from "hospital life" but it soon proved too much for me.  I began to feel the pain, which might be a result of my own stupidity.  I had decided, because I was feeling better, I was only going to take one of my pain killers today.  It was working just fine for several hours, but after my busy day my pain caught up with me.  We said goodbye to my friends and Ethan took me home to bed.

We relaxed the whole afternoon and I was able to recuperate enough so that I could make a second trip up to the hospital with Ethan around 9 PM.  It was such a great night  in the NICU, it was very quiet and we were the only parents there.  Hannah is doing well with the breast milk so they decided to double the amount she gets.  She is now getting 16 mL every 3 hours.

This is how baby Hannah is fed.  The milk is placed in the syringe hanging from the top of her bed and it is fed through her feeding tube using gravity. 

The nurse asked if I had had the opportunity to hold my daughter.  I told her, just once.  She smiled and asked if I wanted to hold her again; of course my answer was a resounding YES.  After the somewhat difficult transfer from her bed to my arms, we settled in.  Despite how nerve racking it is to hold her, I know once she has surgery I wont be able to hold her for a very long time.  I soaked in every minute.  The nurse turned to Ethan and asked if he wanted to hold her.  I told her he was too scared.  She looked at him and said, "well we are going to fix that right now."  I am so glad she said that, I had been trying to convince him to hold her for several minutes.  He couldn't say no now, the nurse had called him out.  We made the transfer from my arms to Ethan's   It was almost as enjoyable to watch Ethan hold my baby girl, almost.  She fit so perfectly in her daddy's arms; seeing him smiling at her, talking to her and of course singing to her just warms my mommy heart.  We stayed as long as we could, by 11 o'clock my pain was starting to come back.  I reluctantly left all too aware of the few short days until I have to watch my princess go into surgery.

She kept pulling her feeding tube out of her mouth so they put socks on her hands.

Daddy was using the flash on the camera

We know that God is watching over our princess.  We are so grateful we understand the Plan of Salvation, which gives us the peace and comfort to know that if anything does happen to her we will get to spend the eternities together as a family.