Milk Run

What happens when you're hardly able to visit your baby in the hospital? Well, aside from the many emotional things, eventually they run out of milk.

Sarah and I piled into the car and drove down to deliver a cooler's worth. A smallish cooler. It's not like I showed up with a full-sized Coleman ready to tailgate in the nursery.

But I was able to see our girl for about (let me check the official records...) seven minutes. Really. Sarah was able to get back there only because she's been on antibiotics, but wasn't allowed to hang out. So we dumped the cooler, grabbed my pumping stuff since the timing worked out, and spent twenty minutes in the pump room. Back into the nursery to drop off the goods and snap a couple quick pics before we were on our way again.

Two-plus hours of driving to spend twenty-seven minutes at the hospital. TOTALLY worth it.

On the ride back home, Sarah was drawing in the car. I asked her to make a picture of Jane, expecting to get something resembling a portrait of unravelled yarn. Instead, she surprised me with this:

I'm sorry, but that is just precious. That's right, PRECIOUS. A word I NEVER use. But come on! Her first picture that looks anything like what it's supposed to be and it's her baby sister? There is no other word for it but precious. But the best part is that where it's colored in under the head? That's Jane's neck. She drew the trach!

Well, I was impressed.

As for the real-life baby, Jane's doing pretty well. Except for, ugh, the bleb. Yup, the damn lobe is bigger again. Probably just from the surgery -- I mean, Jane had to be flat on her back for days to let her neck heal, a position that wasn't doing that lung any favors. She was acting a little fussy so they did some blood work that showed a high white blood cell count and another something or other that indicated high levels of inflammation. Uh, surgery? Remember? People get all swollen? And uncomfortable? Ah, right. SO glad they bothered drawing blood. So they're paying attention to her positioning and keeping a close eye on her various statistics, checking the twelve-hour trends to make sure she isn't slipping back toward a scarier place lung-wise. But she's still acting normal, and her respiratory and breathing rates are perfect when she's asleep. It's just when she's awake that things get ramped up.

Oh, Jane. You're just not satisfied unless you're mystifying the doctors, are you?