Ups & Downs

Right from the outset the team at the Special Care Baby Unit said we were in for a long haul with plenty of ups and downs and this I experienced for the first time today.

The great news from this morning (Tuesday) was that Amy had a really good first night without the ventilator and was still breathing on her own when I arrived, and still is. I'd spent yesterday evening convinced that it was too early and that she'd have to go back on it and was pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong.

Not only that but when I showed up, Anna was in the middle of moving wires around and cleaning fluid from Amy's mouth (she gurgles quite a bit). She was beaming with joy as she told me that she had been able to hold Amy for the first time while they changed her nappy, albeit still in the incubator, but she had held both head and body at the same time which must have been amazing.

One of the doctors then came to explain a procedure that they needed to perform on Amy. The lines carrying the fluids into her body are really only a short-term measure and can easily become blocked. For babies that require fluids for a longer period, a 'Peripheral Longline' is used. This is basically a quite complicated procedure where a tube inserted into one of the main veins to deliver the required fluids. The problem is, there are risks attached. When the skin is broken there is always the risk of infection. In rarer cases the line can pierce the opposite side of the vein or in the case of a line inserted into the chest, puncture the lung. To this end, another consent form was required and a good 15-20 minutes of Anna & me digesting what was going to happen and coming to terms with it. I couldn't believe it, one minute I'm elated because she's breathing on her own after only 3 days and then I'm plunged straight back into panic mode. They did warn us though.

Having signed the forms they suggested we 'have a walk around' while they did their stuff so we went back to Anna's room. 3 hours later (3:30PM), no word. I politely asked at the desk if they could call down for an update which they did, to be informed that they couldn't get the line in first time so they were letting Amy rest to try again in the afternoon. Nice to be told eh? So we waited another 3 hours - no word. One of the midwives came in to ask if there was any news and we both shrugged. She dutifully scooted off to find out what was happening and came back with the news that the line was in and they were just settling Amy down - nice to be told eh? So 6 hours of pacing the corridors was how I spent this afternoon. I guess we'd better get used to it.

To be fair there had been a shift change so the new team were probably unaware that we were on tenterhooks upstairs, plus they'd had another emergency admission similar to us that afternoon too.

On the plus side I heard Amy cry for the first time today - what sweet music! I'll never forget it and as far as I'm concerned she can scream the place down. I don't think I'll ever tire of listening to it. The louder it gets, the stronger she's getting. In fact you can hear it too if you download this small MPEG. It's nice because Anna is there too - Mummy and baby. Sorry it's a bit dark but the lights were quite low.

Click Here (opens a new window which you can close afterwards and return to this post)

I had a tremendous helping of Sausage & Chips at the refectory and afterwards we settled down for an evening of CSI & Lyon's Den courtesy of Channel 5. It still strikes me as odd that we can do such mundane everyday things when so much hangs in the balance downstairs. I suppose it helps keep us sane.

Some more pictures from today now including the first close-up of her ladyship without the ventilator.