Baby Lottery

We are still here at UCSF tonight, hoping that our little adventure will end tomorrow with us getting to go back home. It's safe to say we are all a little over the experience, especially Cora who has lost some of her pep since we arrived yesterday.

The kids are still at Grammie and Papa's house in hopes that Cora will be discharged tomorrow, in which case they will never have to know that Cora went back to the hospital at all. Dominic is so protective over her and he worries even when she has a doctor's appointment, so I wanted to spare him this little blip. When we dropped them off we told them that Grammie and Papa really wanted to have them for a sleepover, and we didn't mention anything about Cora. If she stays after tomorrow then we will need to get them and bring them home, because we know too well how these things can become drawn out. I feel like if Cora doesn't get discharged tomorrow, who knows when she will. Get in; get out. That's the idea. Otherwise you can get into the hospital vortex where everything gathers it's own momentum and before you know it, you've been here forever.

At this point the medical team is just watching Cora and waiting for her lungs to shed some of the fluid they've accumulated. She is on an additional diuretic now, and we will go home on that, so it's just a matter of fine tuning the dose and making sure that solves the problem. In the meantime she has quite the smoker's cough and is none too happy about it.

I stayed here last night and was hard pressed to put more than twenty minutes of sleep together in a row. There was all kinds of rigamarole when we arrived which went on until just before 1am, and then she had treatments every two hours and coughing spells in between that made it very hard to sleep. I gave up around 6am and went to get coffee.

One day when all my kids are grown and healthy(ish), I plan to go to a deserted island, stocked with gallons of mint chip ice cream, and sleep for approximately three months. Then I will wake up and read a book, which is something I have dearly missed. Just to read a book! That would be amazing.

Today when Jason and I were retaping Cora's tubes we decided to give her a break from her oxygen cannula and just put her in front of an oxygen mask for a while. We hardly ever, ever get the privilege of seeing Cora's sweet cheeks because they are forever covered with the tape that holds her tubes in place. My oh my, did she ever look beautiful with those cheeks exposed. It was so fun to see her little nose and to examine her face without all the obstructions. We both marveled at how different she looks, and I would add, how absolutely precious. I petted her cheek for a while, and we snapped a picture to remember what she looks like without that stuff.

It was just another beautiful moment. You see, Cora is like winning the baby lottery. I get that this might be a weird thing to say, but I really see her challenges as separate from her. Her little body has it's issues, but that is beside the point. Her overwhelming quality is that she absolutely exudes love.