Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day (a day late)! Our Mother's Day was one for the books!

After getting spoiled by Matt and Eli, we arrived at the hospital to see our Ella girl. Dr. Swanson (the PICU doctor) came in to fill us in on the goals for the day. He was hoping to do a couple of things with her medications and he wanted us to HOLD HER!!! What?! We were so surprised!!! We thought we weren't supposed to hold her while she has the chest tubes in, but Dr. Swanson wanted to make it happen. He told us it should help the wound on the back of her head heal as well.

So...

After 38 days Matt finally got to hold his baby girl. 💗It was the sweetest! Our parents and Matt's grandma came down and there wasn't a dry eye (other than Eli's) in the room when the nurses handed Ella to Matt. It was a moment that I will never forget. After his turn holding Ella, I was able to hold her too. I ended up holding her for a couple of hours and I had no idea I held her for that long!!! The time flew by as I watched Ella sleep in my arms. I looked at her sweet face and little body, trying to take it all in and praising God for her life. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt holding her even though she was hooked up to so many different lines--especially the chest tube and ventilator tubes.

Ella had her anti-coagulation medicine switched to Lovinox so that she doesn't need as frequent of blood draws as she did with the Heparin. I explained in the previous post that this is risky because we can't just shut it off if we notice the brain bleed getting worse. It stays in her system for about 12 hours after it is given. The nurses and doctor kept getting really wonky numbers during the blood draws and tried to get a phlebotomist to come get a clean blood draw with a needle rather than through a line that she has in place already. The phlebotomist wasn't able to get enough blood because she's so tiny, as are her vessels, so the doctor decided to pause the Lovinox until they could get an accurate reading. We prayed that God would help the nurses and doctors get a good draw for her and they were able to today so they are adjusting her meds to get the exact amount that she will need to help with those clots. Please, please continue to pray these clots go away. They are disrupting a ton of progress for Ella.

Today was one of my favorite days of Ella's life so far. Eli went back to Grass Valley today so we were alone with Ella for the afternoon/evening. I got to hold Ella again today and she was awake the whole time!!! We had doctors and social workers come by her room and "ooo" and "ah" over the fact that we got to hold her. Ella has become very popular in the PICU. Some nurses have said that they have become really attached to her. It's so sweet to have everyone love our baby girl. We have been on the PICU floor the longest of anyone there now.

Back to when I was holding her... Ella was so alert, looking around at everything and examining our faces. Matt read books to her too using funny voices for each character. Once she needed to be put back into her bed, we stood at her side for a long time again and just watched her little face look around and take everything in. We were told by nurses that we would see this sense of relief once she got the trach and that was so evident to us today. She seemed so happy. We realized that she had been awake for at least four hours straight! Before the trach, we never saw her awake for that long in an entire week or two combined, so it was so fun to talk with her and make funny faces at her.

Ella has been doing so well breathing with her trach and was able to be taken down on the ventilator support a lot. They took a blood sample for her blood gas numbers again this evening and Dr. Falco said they are better than he's ever seen them, the respiratory nurse even called them "beautiful". I am praying that we won't have to bring a ventilator home with us and that she will be able to breathe through the trach on her own soon!

I will be posting another blog post with a bunch of pictures soon!

Love,
Jillian