Learning to Walk

We just finished day #2 at the hospital and I finally got internet access to do a blog post. Alisha spent all day recovering from surgery. She was groggy, in pain and uncomfortable for much of the day. Around 4pm she was finally able to stand for 1-2 minutes and by 9pm tonight she was able to walk on her own enough to get into a wheelchair and go see the baby for the first time.

Here are some pictures that I took of our daughter today as a switched back and forth between Alisha's room on the 3rd floor and the baby's room on the 1st floor. The baby is being monitored 24 hours a day in an incubator:

A nurse is either at her bedside or within about 15 feet. They are monitoring her heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, and breathing rate (along with others). If any of her vital signs go outside normal values, an alarm will sound and the nurse will adjust her to get things back in order. For instance her blood oxygen level will occasionally drop, so the nurse will increase the ratio of oxygen in the air she breathes. Right now her big struggle is to maintain body heat. Since she doesn't have any body fat, she needs a bed warmer to keep around 98 degrees.

Here is a close up that I got of her foot. I got to touch her foot and all 5 of her toes will fit within one segment of one of my fingers. The LED making it glow is one of the sensors for her vital signs:

Here is my hand holding her head. You can see how big she is head-to-foot. They call this "containment", where the pressure against her extremities makes her feel like she's still contained in the womb. They said that any petting or stroking of her skin would give her sensory overload, so we just use constant pressure when we touch her:

We took some better quality pictures of her face, hands, and feet with Alisha's big camera, so I hope to upload some of those tomorrow once I'm able to make it home. Tonight I'll be staying here at the hospital with Alisha while she continues to recover.