Recovery

Daddy and Amelia last night. Daddy's playing DS and Amelia is sleeping away.

I tried to put these at the end of the blog- but I have no idea how to operate photos on here. Anyway this is Miss Amelia sleeping- poor child has no idea that we're about to starve her for almost three days :(

So we have moved on to the recovery phase of our journey! And we couldn't be happier to be here that's for sure. It seems to help me if I break up this whole process into small little hour or sometimes minute chunks. I know I can get through each this as it comes if it's only for a small amount of time :)

Anyway she went in for surgery at 8:30. I only shed a few tears when they took her away- mostly because she was screaming bloody murder. One of the nurses last night actually told me that she has the loudest cry she's ever heard..... so for those of you who want to know if she ever makes a noise- yes she does :) The surgery was pretty fast- at least faster than I expected. The actual procedure part only took about 30-40 minutes. Dr. Hockmuth is my new hero! They were able to sew the two parts of her valve back together and didn't have to graft. Dr. Hockmuth said that is the best case scenario so we were very happy about that as well.

We came up to the PICU and had to wait just a little bit before they were ready for us in her room. There are lots and lots of machines with noises and alarms- but everybody has been so helpful in telling us what they are doing and why. Amelia is pretty drugged up right now and is a hard sight for her mommy to see that's for sure. Hopefully she will come off the ventilator tomorrow and then get her chest tube out in the next few days as well. We can't feed her for 48 hours- so not until Saturday sometime. I am really grateful at this point for those nurses- cause I know I can not spend another night listening to her cry because she's hungry! Eric is down checking on her now and I'm going to try to catch a nap before going back to see her.

Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers and messages today. Just when I thought it was too hard to handle I would get another message from somebody. It meant a lot to both Eric and I. We know we have a long road ahead of us but we have taken some of the biggest steps already. Things have really been put into perspective and Eric and I just talked about how everything else seems very trivial at this point...... the lessons of parenthood I guess :)

p.s. Eric just got back while I was finishing typing this. She is doing great- her blood pressure has come down to a better level and they are giving her pain drugs on a continuous basis. Here's praying for some good rest and recovery. I'll update again soon!