TLCSHANNON

Yesterday and today were good days, the baby recovered well from his surgery and the scare we had with the lung, I guess they nicked it during surgery and then he was on high pressures after surgery and that is what caused the air to leak out into his chest area. It seems to be healing nicely and they have turned the drain tube off that is in his chest and are just watching it, the xray showed no signs of air building back up, so that is good news. He is now on 24% oxygen and we breathe 21%, they turned all his pressures down last night to a very low setting and he is still doing great, I got to hold him for an hour yesterday and it felt so good. He is passing gas, stools and they are hearing bowel sounds, so tonight they said they might extubate him, im not in a hurry though, I like stable and I like knowing he is still here and doing good, I am learning to take it one day at a time. After surgery, he was heavily sedated and he stared jerking and his arms flopped in the air and I ran out telling the nurse he was having seizures, but when she came in she said they were hiccups and since his muscles were relaxed everything would fly in the air, everyone laughed and I was relieved. I am just starting to climb out of my constant state of panic and relaxing just a little. I came into thinking the worst and now that he is doing better than expected, I am learning to accept that. they keep telling me that he wont be here as long as other babies and soon I will be home with him and this will all be forgotten, I said, i will not believe anything until it happens, and I don't think I will ever forget this, I can't, it has changed my life forever. It's kinda like a soldier going to war and coming home to a family and friends that say, oh yeah, he was at war and I bet it was scarey, the poor guy, but in reality, they have know freakin idea just what he has been through, and if they did have even a small inkling of an idea, they would probably need therapy for the rest of their lives. I am a mess, a basket case and I put on my war face every time i go down there. I tried to prepare my mom for what to expect from what I had read and then found out that I wasn't prepared. If I had to give advice to the people who are due very soon, i would say, maybe call your doctor for something to calm and relax you through the tougher times and set backs, find something to distract a good part of your day (i have been pumping milk, it makes me feel like I am doing something at least, because you will feel helpless and when your baby has a tube down his throat and he turns purple with anger and cries but no sound comes out, you are going to feel horrible, sad, sick and helpless and he will just look at you with the most pathetic expression that says help me,take this thing out and pick me up) so I pump, eat,see the baby and sleep, it feels like its been a month or two when its really only day 8!! Also, everyone here is in the same boat as me, they have very sick babies and they are worried too. My first night the girl in the room next to mine was crying, and mean howling and I thought what is going on over there, then it hit me, this is the nicu, she has a sick baby, oh no. I guess I was so caught up in my situation that I assumed I was the only one here going through it. Also, for those of you that are given a bad prognosis, don't listen to them, wait until your little one is born and let them tell their story, I was told my son had a little less than a full right lung, about 1/4 of a left lung and only his small intestine sliding up and down. I even asked the u/s tech if she could see the spleen and stomach and every time they that they were all where they should be, even the MRI showed that, but when they got in there, it was stomach up, small and large bowel up, spleen up. The nurse told me that per the operative report they had a difficult time getting them all back down into the abdomen but they did it and the left lung was actually half of the right lung and the right lung was full size and the left lung got in the way and that is how it got nicked. they said they always want to try and do thorascopic because its better but if they get in there and cannot do it, they will go the other way. Hange in there ladies if you are expecting, no one knows what will happen when they are born, no one, except God. I am glad my mom was here, she held me up when I needed her the most in all of my 33 years, she put her feelings aside and took care of her baby who was falling apart, and then when she knew the baby was stable, then she cried, then she let her feelings out, I was in awe of her courages ability to be there for me and how motherly instinct works. I am about to go see if my little man is awake and hold him for a while, I love watching him act like a newborn now, he scrunches his face up and yawns and pulls his feel to his chest and throws his arms above his head, Maybe I shouldn't have read all the survivor stories or any stories before giving birth, it just made me worry that all those things were going to happen to my son during recovery, but then again maybe if I didnt read them I would not have anything to compare my sons progress with to know how good he is doing.