Post Surgery

Sarah was brought back to the NICU where, Jessica, Sarah's nurse was helpful in getting us situated.

We could stay as long as we wanted, just not during staff changes. They don't like to have people in the room when they are reviewing all the cases and talking about patients that might be confidential.

We did stay through the shift change as there weren't many babies in our NICU room and there wasn't much to update.

The NICU, at our hospital, is a series of dorm type rooms. Each of the room has eight beds. Each nurse has one or two babies to look after. There are dozens of machines that do all kinds of monitoring. The babies need frequent attention and the nurses really work hard. They have to perform procedures such as changing medications, cleaning and changing dressings and constantly replacing adhesive contacts that send all kinds of info to the monitors. They seem to have to change dressings much more frequently than in the PICU or regular hospital.

The darn connectors keep falling off the kids and the monitors go crazy.

You almost get used to machines beeping and blinking. When Will was in the hospital, I would freak out if the machine started beeping. Sometimes I think he would pull the leads off on purpose, just to mess with me. He was smart little 4 week old!!

Although I cannot hold Sarah right now, I know she is in the right place. Thank GOD it is 2007. 30 years ago, this might have turned out differently. I have faith in the doctors and our nurse.