Day 9 - finally over!

First of all, forgive me if any of this is repeat of my earlier post. Without having a computer the whole time we've been here, all these updates have been typed slowly from my phone & it's not easy to go back & check to see where I left off in my last posting. Plus, 9 days of very little sleep, combined with "pregnancy brain" makes for poor memory!

The morning & afternoon were pretty good. Ethan's managed to stay at .2L of oxygen all day with sats in mid-upper 90s! Hopefully they'll drop him to .1L or nothing at all tomorrow but haven't heard anything official on that yet.

Ethan had another chest X-ray this morning so we didn't make it to the morning playroom time but he walked the whole way there & back, which counted for our first walk of the day.

Then, after rest time & lunch, we were visited by the clowns again, as well as some UNC football players. Since the football guys were not in uniform, Ethan wasn't really impressed to meet them. Wish I had thought to get a picture of them with Ethan but didn't think about it until they were already gone.

Next, we took out second walk to the playroom & stayed the entire 2 hours it was open. There was only one other kid there so it was nice & quiet & we had time to check out all the different toys available! We mainly stuck to playing with cars & tools.

About an hour after we got back from the playroom, it was time for Ethan's afternoon dose of IV Lasix. As his nurse started to clean & flush the line, she determined it had blown so she had to remove it & place a new line. This was by far the hardest hour of the 9 days we've been here. :( They've always struggled to get IV's & blood draws done on his little veins & today was no exception. It took 2 nurses, 3 tries & a total of 1 whole hour of blood-curdling screaming & crying before they finally got a new line placed in his left  foot (same foot as the line he blew yesterday). I'll confess I even shed a few tears as I held his hand & tried my best to distract him & help hold him still. The crazy part of it all is that they are about done with the IV Lasix & want/need to start transitioning him to oral probably as soon as tomorrow (Saturday).

After all of that ordeal, he fell asleep & slept for 2 hours. That gave me a little time to rest & recover before Dan showed up. He stayed asleep long enough to also allow us time to slip off to the cafe for dinner together. Shortly after we returned, he woke up & we spent some time together as a family just resting & watching some TV before Dan went back to the RMH to sleep. We never made it back out of the room for Ethan's 3rd walk of the day but I think that's fine because the nurses said he got plenty of respiratory therapy by crying for an hour straight :(

Well, this post has taken me so long to compose that it's officially the next day now so I better try to get some sleep.

In all my focus on keeping you all updated on Ethan, I think I've neglected to share a personal prayer request of my own. For the most part, I've really enjoyed being pregnant & am extremely thankful to have pretty easy pregnancies, buy this time, the 2nd half of this pregnancy, I've been having some pelvic floor pain. Up until Ethan's surgery, it's been fairly manageable, but recently it's really started to affect my sleep. It's become impossible to lay down to sleep so I have to sleep sitting in a chair or couch, which is not comfortable at all here at the hospital. There are no chairs in our room at the RMH so that's the main reason I've been spending most nights here at the hospital instead of trading off with Dan. So that's one more reason we can't wait to get back home! I did finally call my OB doc today to ask for additional pain relief ideas b/c none of the ideas she mentioned at my last visit have helped so she said the next step is to be referred to a chiropractor. As soon as we figure out when we'll be getting out of here, I'll call & book that appointment.

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read our blog & continue praying for us. Also, thanks for the comments & words of encouragement. Even though we don' t personally respond to them, please know we read & appreciate rach one. You are speaking my love language by posting them!