Something wonderful happened over the last weekend; Riley became tremendously boring (not to us though). We had grown somewhat accustomed to our little girl being surprising and sometimes even confusing. One day she would be doing fantastic followed by a day filled with worrying stats. All of that changed and I can probably even tell you the moment I realized this. I was sitting by Riley's bedside like I normally do and glanced over at what Riley's nurse was doing as she intently typed away on her work computer. I wondered if she was updating Riley's stats or filling in paperwork for the nurse who would take over from her. Turns out it was none of the above; she was googling the lemon detox diet. Our nurse who was assigned to keep a careful watch over Riley had so little to do that she was entertaining herself. A pattern began to form with the following nurses as they all seemed to not have enough to keep them occupied. They began to offer to help out the nurses beside us with their babies and leave us to watch her. Riley used to be such a handful and now she was barely a full days work.
Our thought was that surely we would finally get moved up to the cardiac ward and off the PICU right away? Well almost. The following few days consisted of watching other babies get moved but Riley stayed right where she was. Chalk it up to overly cautious doctors who had been tricked before by Riley's good behaviour. It wasn't until Monday when we heard that a bed had opened up on the ward and only one baby was going to be making the move. Through the grapevine we heard it was between Riley and the baby next to her who had been at the PICU barely a week. Honestly if we had a dollar for every time a doctor said to us that Riley would move to the ward either the next day or the next week we would be very rich people indeed. We decided to just play it cool and see who would win the coveted bed on the ward.
And then came the call; Riley was moving to the Cardiac Ward. We said goodbye to all the nurses and doctors we had grown to like a whole lot (well not so much a goodbye but more a see you later as Riley will return there after her second open heart surgery) and said a BIG hello to the cardiac ward. Where we have moved to is the Close Observation section of the ward which is kind of like a mini-PICU. Here the nurses have to look after more than just your one baby and if Riley shows herself to be stable then she will move into one of the rooms where she will stay until her next surgery. We hope to move into one of them sometime in the next few days/week.
Otherwise we have made the adjustment to not being so focused on Riley's vitals and now put our attention solely on just being parents. There were days there where I would just stare at her monitor hoping she would be stable. These days I just hope that Riley doesn't get too upset when her dummy falls out of her mouth. We get to feed her, give her a bath, keep her amused; all the normal things. And we don't even have to have a nurse supervising us anymore, we just go right ahead and do it all. Don't get me wrong; she still needs to work on her oxygen sats and feeding is something that we are going to have to continually work on over the next months because she doesn't have enough stamina to feed normally (This is something we are going to work up to). But hopefully for a little while our blog entries become more about typical boring parenting stuff; you know the type where a parent raves about all the things their baby has done that seem immensely interesting to them but may not be so interesting to everyone else. You may even stop reading it because we have nothing exciting to write about so we resort to blogging about Riley's different facial expressions (currently it can shift between a frowning face and a slightly less frowning face; just in case you really wanted to know).
Things are slowly becoming more normal and that is far from a bad thing.
Our thought was that surely we would finally get moved up to the cardiac ward and off the PICU right away? Well almost. The following few days consisted of watching other babies get moved but Riley stayed right where she was. Chalk it up to overly cautious doctors who had been tricked before by Riley's good behaviour. It wasn't until Monday when we heard that a bed had opened up on the ward and only one baby was going to be making the move. Through the grapevine we heard it was between Riley and the baby next to her who had been at the PICU barely a week. Honestly if we had a dollar for every time a doctor said to us that Riley would move to the ward either the next day or the next week we would be very rich people indeed. We decided to just play it cool and see who would win the coveted bed on the ward.
And then came the call; Riley was moving to the Cardiac Ward. We said goodbye to all the nurses and doctors we had grown to like a whole lot (well not so much a goodbye but more a see you later as Riley will return there after her second open heart surgery) and said a BIG hello to the cardiac ward. Where we have moved to is the Close Observation section of the ward which is kind of like a mini-PICU. Here the nurses have to look after more than just your one baby and if Riley shows herself to be stable then she will move into one of the rooms where she will stay until her next surgery. We hope to move into one of them sometime in the next few days/week.
Otherwise we have made the adjustment to not being so focused on Riley's vitals and now put our attention solely on just being parents. There were days there where I would just stare at her monitor hoping she would be stable. These days I just hope that Riley doesn't get too upset when her dummy falls out of her mouth. We get to feed her, give her a bath, keep her amused; all the normal things. And we don't even have to have a nurse supervising us anymore, we just go right ahead and do it all. Don't get me wrong; she still needs to work on her oxygen sats and feeding is something that we are going to have to continually work on over the next months because she doesn't have enough stamina to feed normally (This is something we are going to work up to). But hopefully for a little while our blog entries become more about typical boring parenting stuff; you know the type where a parent raves about all the things their baby has done that seem immensely interesting to them but may not be so interesting to everyone else. You may even stop reading it because we have nothing exciting to write about so we resort to blogging about Riley's different facial expressions (currently it can shift between a frowning face and a slightly less frowning face; just in case you really wanted to know).
Things are slowly becoming more normal and that is far from a bad thing.
It was great seeing you all on our church screen, feel like you were right there with us :)
ReplyDeleteLooking beautiful Riley and healthy too! Mum you are glowing and looking gorgeous, and dad you are looking more relaxed and paternal :)
We are going to pray for all the things Riley needs to improve so you can move into the next room before her next op. It is so wonderful to see you enjoying parenthood together :) Lots of love, prayers and blessings to you. Sue Hinds