today is a good day

Today I am feeling the relief I was hoping for last night. I think my brain just needed a rest so it could process all that has happened in the last week. Mia is doing amazing today, she is so strong. Except for some puffiness, especially in her abdomen and chest, she hasn't taken any of the steps back that we were warned about. She is down to only two IV's - a broviac IV in her neck, and a UAC in her belly button. Her hands and feet are needle-free. She is being slowly weaned from the oxygen on her ventilator (down to 25% today from 40% yesterday), and is also being slowly weaned off the Morphine. She is still hanging out under her "tanning bed" lights, but opens her eyes and looks around when she gets a break from her goggles every few hours. I changed another diaper today and she had a small bowel movement (you can tell I'm a mom when I get excited about poop).

Obviously, we are not completely "out of the woods" yet, but I feel really good about Mia's recovery. She has already proven to be a fighter so many times, and I'm sure she is as anxious to come home as we are to take her there. There are many milestones she will have to reach before we can take her home with us, and it will probably take several weeks, but the baby steps she is taking to recovery let me know that we'll get there soon enough.

***

Ryan pulled our trailer down here on Sunday afternoon. It was a difficult decision to make for me, easy for him. We obviously cannot afford to stay in a hotel and we weren't entirely comfortable staying at the Ronald McDonald house. Fortunately, the Kiwanis House has RV hookups and we will be camping in their parking lot for a while. And since we were already living in the trailer, moving it down here and "setting up house" really didn't take too much effort.

When your life turns upside down, I think you subconsciously seek out any form of stability you can hang on to. While our first night (last Sunday) in the hotel was miserable, our room quickly became the one constant we could rely on. It provided TV, hot water, and a place to step away from the hospital. As strange as it sounds, it became home-like very quickly...at least for me. Even though I knew we couldn't afford to stay there indefinitely, I was comfortable and I didn't want to leave. Of course, now that I'm sitting on my own bed in our trailer, I have different feelings, and I'm really glad Ryan was ambitious enough to go home and get the trailer on his own.

Speaking of Ryan, have I mentioned how amazing my husband is lately? Seriously, wonderful. I can't even begin to list all the ways he has helped me through this, and hopefully, I've been able to help him too. In our relationship, he is very much a rock for me - steady, someone I can lean on (literally and figuratively), calming, supportive...basically everything I've needed, especially in the past nine days. When he looks at our sick baby, I know he is feeling the same pain I am and we've taken turns crying on each other's shoulders. I couldn't ask for a better partner.

We say "I love you" a lot in our little family. Ryan and I say it to each other several times a day. We tell Laci we love her, pretty much all the time, and of course, we tell Mia we love her every time we see her. Even little Laci says "I love you," although it usually comes out sounding like "Ah mahd oh" (ummm, what?). I can't tell you how important it is to tell your loved ones how you feel. Life is very precious and also very fragile, you just don't know when someone you love might be taken from you. As I've gotten older, I have grown out of the habit of telling my parents and sisters how much I love them. And even though I know that they know I love them, it still needs to be said, out loud. I hope my girls never outgrow saying, "I love you."

(sister needs a bath and some lotion like you wouldn't believe)