Bad days and good days

My sweet June is one week old today. This first week has held many challenges and many accomplishments for her. She was born with no heartbeat and not breathing which of course resulted in her being fully resuscitated at delivery, then she had several cardiac issues on the transfer from Florida Hospital at Celebrations to Florida Hospital at Orlando. But, praise God, she stabilized soon after. I was released from the hospital 12 hours after birth so that we could go be with her.

Since then, she has had issues with losing too much sodium through urinating too much (which seems to be righting itself), her body is producing too many white blood cells which is not normal considering she's already on antibiotics, which should be preventing that. All of the cultures taken have not grown anything and two tries at doing a spinal tap has proved unsuccessful. They will give her 2-3 days to see if they're still elevated, and if they are, they will bring in a Hematologist to run some test. They believe she may have an overactive bone marrow which is producing too many white blood cells. I'm not sure how that's treated, we're just trying to take it one step at a time. Last night they tried to take her off of the breathing tube and put onto a nasal CPAP, but after a few hours her oxygen had gone from 23% to 78%, which is not okay. The decision was then made to put the tube back in, and while she had a difficult time adjusting to it, she eventually stabilized and was okay through the night.

The most challenging day has been today, by far. An ultrasound of the brain was done this morning and we learned that June Claire has a stage 3 Intraventricular Hemorrhage, or IVH. This is basically a brain bleed. There are 4 stages, but the doctor and radiologist are confident that she is on the mild side of stage 3, which is good news. There is a 60% chance nothing will be affected long-term, but there is that 40% chance that there will be long-term side effects.

I touched her head for the first time today. The nurse showed me how to cradle her feet with one hand and her head with the other, and it's the closest I've been to holding her since she was born. We are gradually becoming more and more comfortable with touching her. She's so tiny that it feels like we're going to break her! The above picture is of me taking her temperature. I was soooo nervous. And when we change her diaper...well, you'd think we'd never changed a diaper before in our lives! It was so nice to connect with her today.

We ask that you continue to keep June Claire in your thoughts and prayers. We get Sara back tomorrow, and I AM SO HAPPY! I have missed my oldest sweet girl something terrible.