My awesome nurses made me scrapbook pages, they can decorate my room now, and go into a scrapbook for me later :)
Maria made this one for me on my second day of life, those are my tiny little footprints!
Lauren knew I am a cowgirl without anyone telling her! She suprised Mommy and Daddy and had a little photo shoot while they were out to lunch, then decorated this for my room and I <3 it!
8/9 - Reagan's day of life 8
Today I weighed: 428 grams or 15 oz, I’m going to be a whopper! J
What
a day this has turned out to be already!
Well
I’m a cowgirl… and maybe a bit of a rockstar!?! My test results are in and so far
I have no bleeds in my brain (surprising as my delivery was somewhat traumatic
on my little body). AND my echocardiogram showed that the artery in my heart that
would require me having rounds of meds with some rough side effects or even
open heart surgery is closed! The doctors couldn’t be happier with what they
saw on the tests. I have one area in my brain that they will keep a close eye
on as I grow, but for now, everything looks great. I’m not out of the woods
just yet, my brain could still bleed at any point, and that artery could reopen
as I grow, but for now everything is alright and I am going to fight like a girl
to keep it that way!
In
other news, my nurse Carroll told Mommy to keep watching my eyes, as today might
just be the day that I decide to open them up and let the world see them!
(don’t worry, the first thing Mom did was make sure the camera had plenty of
battery for an afternoon photo shoot) I won't be able to see anything for quite a while yet, and when I can see it will mostly be shadows and lights for a while but everyone is excited to see what my eyes will look like open!
I’m also up on my feedings, the doctors
started me at ½ a CC of breast milk every 12 hours on my second day of life. By
today I am up to 5 CC every 6 hours! Now I just need to poop J Mom says she
never knew she would get so excited about anyone pooping, but suddenly it seems
like a pretty big deal!
So far I've been getting all of my fluids through a line that the doctors placed in my umbilical cord when I was born. Today I'll get my next phase IV line, it will go in through my arm and the end of the line will be close to my heart. They'll leave my UV line in today to make sure I'll tolerate this new line but if all goes well, tomorrow I'm on to my new bigger girl line :) the yucky news is that once I am on the new IV line the nurses will have to stick my heels to get my blood for my daily tests but at least they will only have to do that twice a day (as long as I cooperate and keep my blood gasses where they need to be) Mom and Dad are not looking forward to the heel sticks, but I am much tougher than they give me credit for.
Now
for the sappy stuff from my mom...
So far, I've given nothing but Reagan updates and everyone has said "wonderful, but how are you and Matt holding up" So here is a little insight into how we are choosing to look at things.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can or will
prepare you for something like this. Any parent will tell you that your entire
world changes the second you lay eyes on your newborn baby, and Matt and I are
no different in that respect. The pain of delivery is long forgotten when you see her, anything
and everything you ever thought you wanted seems obsolete, and you are so proud
of this adorable little person. It really puts everything into perspective,
suddenly nothing matters except the well being of your child and you find
yourself putting their needs before your own without even realizing it.
Eventually
every parent also has to learn and accept that there are certain things that
you cannot protect your child from. I think most parents learn this when their
child gets his or her first round of shots; you grit your teeth, and hold the m
tight, holding your breath, in pain yourself as the nurse slowly braces herself
and gives your little one their first shot. You wait, you know it’s coming. You
knew that this needed to be done, you knew it would be hard, you didn’t know it would be that hard.
Holding back your own tears when finally, that cry, or scream lets you know
it’s over, you can hold and rock and soothe your little one, knowing it’s over,
knowing that now you can hold them tight and while you can’t take the hurt
away, you can love them and try to kiss it and make it better. Then they learn to walk and
suddenly your home has never felt like such a dangerous place, they’re into
everything, pulling things down on themselves, falling, scraping their knees,
there is no stopping it now, and no way to protect them from their newfound
freedom. At first, you fall each time they fall, desperately wanting to catch
them each time so that they don’t have to feel the pain that comes with the
fall. Slowly you learn to let them fall, let them get that boo boo, and let
them learn. Then comes the hardest part, watching your child learn to fail…
getting those training wheels off, mom knows it, dad knows it, he’s going to
fall… it’s going to hurt and he’s going to cry but if he’s ever going to learn,
you’re going to have to let him fail so that he can learn from his
mistakes and try, try, try again until he gets it right.
Matt
and I have been thrown into a steep learning curve here… we are going through
all of these at once, and all in the first week of her life. Obviously Reagan
is walking or riding a bike, but we’re learning to that she has to fight her
fight and as much as we would like to, we can’t make it much better for her. We
didn’t get to protect our Reagan for nearly as long as we should have, or would
have liked to. We’re learning now that all we can do right now is be here for
her… like that first round of shots… we know that it is hard and it probably hurts, but we also know that
it has to be done. So we sit by her when she gets the surfactant that she
hates, we hold back the tears, and though she can’t yet cry, we watch her furrow her little brow, kick
her legs, and we listen as the heart rate monitor tells us that she is not
happy about whats going on right now. We talk to her, tell her we’re
here, or hold her tiny hand, but we can’t take the pain away. Then as her heart
rate returns to normal, and she begins to relax, we feel it; relief, that selfish
relief, knowing that it’s over. It was hard for us to watch but harder for her
to have to endure so we hold it together and try to soothe her if we can.
And
I won’t try to be tough here, it is the hardest thing we will ever do, to watch
our baby girl fight so hard, day and night, knowing that no matter how hard we
try, how much we want for there to be anything we can do to make this easier
for her, we can’t. And so we don’t… we pull together, we talk to her and talk to
her doctors and her nurses and we try to understand what she is going through,
what obstacles are ahead of her, we try to anticipate every challenge she will
face. Just like anticipating that stumble and fall from wobbly, clumsy, newly
upright legs. And we want more than anything to be able to protect her from
those challenges like you try to protect your one year old from falling and
scaping his knee… but one day you learn; you can’t catch him every time he
falls. We can’t protect her from the challenges she will have to face. But we
will be here when she faces them to talk to her and try to soothe her and make
it just a little bit easier when she does.
And
now we wait to see what she can do. Like watching him get the training wheels
off. We know that she will have a bad day eventually, like you know that he
will fall eventually. And we know that we can’t stop it, that if she is going
to get better, it will have to happen, and when it does, we will be here to try
to make it just a little bit better.
And
in the meantime we count our blessings that we have such wonderful support,
from eachother, from our families, from our friends, and from the community. People
that we can rely on for support and to just be there and listen when she has,
and so in turn, we have a bad day.
This
is Reagan’s fight. This is Reagan’s story. We are so thankful each and every
day that we have her. Every single day that there is more of the story to tell,
she is giving us a very precious gift that we will forever cherish. Her life is still an hour by hour, day by day, up hill climb, but she will never be alone in it.
I
don’t know if I believe that everything happens for a reason but I do believe
that you can find good in every story and I know that we believe in Reagan and
we believe that this is just her beginning. So I’ll end this post here by saying I hope
this does not come across as negative, I mean this in no way to evoke sadness
or pity, this is just my explanation of the helplessness we, and all parents
face at points in their children's early years. I mean this to inspire courage in every one who reads it. If tiny little
Reagan can carry on, which one of us cannot?
Every
day Reagan gets a little stronger and so do we, and that makes it easy to be
strong and to be brave. Being strong, brave, and loving are the only things we
can do for Reagan right now, and so we fully intend to be each of those things
to the absolute best of our ability.
When the day finally comes, and we get to hold Reagan, pick her up and cuddle her and kiss her little face and feel like we finally get to love some of the pain away... look out WORLD because we will be on cloud 9!
This
is just the beginning of Reagan’s story…
“Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually
sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So, when you find yourself at
the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.” ~Hope Floats
Oh My Gosh... Holy Tears.. So glad the reports came back good. I am so grateful to have you as a friend you are such a strong person inside and out and Reagan is so very lucky to have you as her Mom :)
ReplyDeletexoxo
Paige