Pneumonia

They said that our time in the NICU would be a "roller coaster ride"..... and right "they" were.

Dalley now has pneumonia. A few days ago (January 19) her stats started becoming a bit unstable again. She was showing a scary resemblance to the last time she got an infection. She had an increased heart rate, temperature instability and a higher requirement from the ventilator for gas exchange in her lungs.

They pulled blood cultures and cultured the aspirate from her trachea and the trachea tested positive for an infection.

She was immediately given another PIC line and started on another round of antibiotics.

My little buddha belly baby getting ready for her third PIC line.

It breaks my heart to think about how much pain this tiny person has already had to endure in her short life. Most babies her age are still safely tucked away in their mother's womb. No requirement put on their lungs to breathe or on their digestive system to digest milk. Her tiny little body is being asked too much and the result is an insufficient immune system that is very susceptible to illness. 

But like every battle she's been forced to fight, she seems to be winning. Her body seems to be responding to the medication and the doctors and nurses luckily caught this infection before it entered her blood stream. In the NICU world, a blood infection (which she had last time), is much worse than a lung infection. 

Yesterday and today she was stable enough that we got to have "modified" skin to skin time. They pulled down the walls of her isolette and I was able to wrap my hands around her body. My small hands completely cover her. 

I was able to contain her for about 20 minutes and in that time I sang to her some of my favorite songs. I sang "You are my Sunshine", because that's what my mom used to sing to me when I was a baby. I sang "Someone like You", because that was one of my favorite songs my grandma Gilbert used to sing. I sang "The Rose", because that's my favorite song of all time. Lastly, I sang to her "The River", by Garth Brooks, because to me it's about the journey of life. .... and hers is just beginning.

Like the rest of us, she is going to have a lifetime of incredibly happy and great times, but also a lifetime of incredibly painful, difficult and trying times. It will be in those moments of anguish that I will remind her of her strength. She is fighting harder than most of us had to just for a chance to exist. Her struggle is hard to watch, but inspiring me at the same time. I will always remind her of the fight she put up to be here and remind her that there isn't anything in this life that she cannot do. 

Rocky Pose!!!!!!

Victory is on the horizon.