December 5

Last night was similar to a night almost 6 months ago when we arrived at Women’s to be induced and brought back a lot of memories. Like half a year ago, we arrived late in the evening, hours after we were supposed to have already been there. Driving down Fannin made me smile as I remembered how excited we were to know you were finally going to be in our arms the next day. When we arrived last night we were admitted, signed papers, and got IV’s started, just like June 8^th. And just like before the night was full of interruptions and light on sleep. The nurses came in and checked on me often, and my contractions started early. The nurses came to check on you often and your tummy was aching from the bowel prep. Daddy had no problems sleeping through either night. And in both cases, though we were a little anxious about what was to come the next morning, we had been looking forward to it for a long time.

(Daddy was hoping we would go into labor on our own so that he could run red lights...I told him it didn't work like that but he wanted to pretend it was a stressful situation anyway.)

(This is you!)

This morning got off to a fairly early start. Daddy had to go to work, but the timing was perfect so that he gave you goodbye kisses and left right as the nurse came to take the rest of us downstairs. We had our final discussions with the doctors and you were taken away about 8:30 with the assurances that the OR nurse would call my cell to update us every hour and a half or so. Grammy, Honey, Mema and I ate breakfast and talked in your room while we waited to hear an update. At 11:00 the OR nurse called to say prepping had taken awhile and the surgery didn’t begin until about 10:15. So we killed some more time and ate lunch. Daddy met us in the food court after he got off work early to come spend the rest of the day with us. It was about 1:45 when I saw a doctor standing a little ways off and thought he looked an awful lot like Dr. Kim. He turned around and made eye contact and my jaw hit the floor. It was Dr. Kim! He walked over to our table and I said, “What are you doing here?” He laughed and said he decided to take a lunch break, and then he thought he might take a nap before finishing up on you. I didn’t believe him for a second and said, “No really, what are you doing here?” He told us that he was looking for us because you had been out of surgery nearly an hour and a half and they couldn’t find us. He was trying to have us paged, but since the nurse had my cell phone number, we never picked up a pager. Missing you in the recovery room seems to be a sad trend of ours. But the good news was that Dr. Kim said everything went great. There were no problems intubating and nothing exciting happened at all.

We rushed to the recovery room just in time to walk with you back up to your room. You have an epidural in so you weren’t in pain, but you were telling me all about your bad Friday morning. Your voice is so hoarse…you sound like a little baby again. And your gums were raw from the tube in your mouth. But other than that you looked great. When we got up to your room Grammy had set up a little pink Christmas tree (which all the nurses love), and Honey brought a bright pink Supergirl balloon! You definitely are my Supergirl.

You had a fever for a little while this evening…100.3 degrees. It normally wouldn’t count as a fever, except you usually run in the 96 degree range. I was worried for awhile that they might want to do a spinal tap since that position would be so uncomfortable for your incision. But with some Tylenol the fever is back down around 98 degrees. You have a catheter in since you have an epidural, and I spotted some blood in your urine. Right now we think it is just trauma from the cath being moved around, but we are keeping an eye on it. And you just blew your first IV. Thankfully the doctors had the foresight to put in a back up IV during the operation so we are using that one now. We pray it will last at least another 24 hours.

The last several weeks you have become almost OCD about rubbing your eyes. You do it almost all day long, often double fisted for both eyes at once. Since your IV was in your left hand, that frustrated you to no end. You kept the other fist right up to your mouth and it almost turned pruney from being sucked on so much…Ms. Theresa will be happy to know you got lots of oral stimulation in this weekend! Because you were hungry and uncomfortable it took you until just now to fall into a good asleep. You have got to be exhausted. Daddy and I sure are. Sleep sweetly Little One. Tomorrow we will have all day to cuddle.