Recovery Day 1

It’s been an interesting day - it ’s amazing seeing Hannah’s change from just this morning to this afternoon. This morning she was awake from about 5:30am - 11:45am - poor baby was just restless and wiggly and half asleep.

After finally sleeping about 3.5 hours, she woke up calmer and more alert. Her breathing is already more regular which is so nice to see. With less work on her heart, she’ll burn less calories. Therefore I think we can stop adding formula to my milk and we can see how she does with weight gain with just milk or just formula. 

We noticed Hannah was making a lot of sucking sounds [when she wasn’t blowing raspberries]. We got a pacifier and she started going after it! A speech and occupational therapist swung by later and after some experimenting with the pacifier and syringe of milk, we tried about 10mL of milk in a bottle and she drank it! Not smoothly, but the coordination came back and they were very impressed. Amazing isn’t it??

She had her forehead monitor removed [just a sticker], her catheter removed, and 4 of the 6 [!!] IJ lines removed [intravenous jugular - yup, meds going into her neck. It’s awful and we can’t wait for that line to come out]. I wasn’t there for the neck dressing to be changed, but Tim said Hannah was MAD. Poor baby. 

I think her lines are:
- oxygen
- 2 hand IVs [blood pressure meds and a diuretic] 
- foot IV [I think as backup]
- sticker sensors on her chest 
- toe sensor
- IJ line [pain meds]
- drainage lines from her heart
- arrhythmia wires [in case her heart goes into arrhythmia, they can correct it] 

I came home this evening because I’m running the Flying Pig 10K tomorrow at 8:30am. Hannah is well and it’s fine for me to get out and run - run off the dust. Dust that’s been on my shoulders since Hannah’s been born. Tim and I feel a lot lighter. We’re past this rough winter of waiting. I am so excited to get back out and see friends, make plans, and get ON with our lives now!!

PS: It’s really strange being here with just the dog. It’s actually lonely and I’ll probably be a bit nervous going to bed tonight.

Trying to calm the wiggles with a mobile.

Finally sacked out after being awake for about 6 hours.