Baby Cailin is in the hospital. Just two weeks old with her first ear infections, her first bronchiolitis, her first bout with RSV, her first nasal suctioning and aerosol inhaler treatments, and her first oxygen unless you count the oxygen they sometimes give to babies while they're being massaged immediately after birth.
See, the thing is, Jessie is a good, solid mom. She is consistent. She is calm. She understands. She's fun. One thing she isn't is negligent. She has been all over the washing of hands and the not breathing or kissing right in the baby's face, but Janey is a very good almost two-year-old. Who needs, needs, needs to show her love for her baby by snuggling faces with her. While recovering from her own ear infections and breathing issues. It seemed inevitable that Baby Cailin would get a share of germs that would bring the first cold of her life. And she did and she has.
The other thing is, Cailin looks like such a healthy baby, it's hard to believe she is as sick as she is. She's cuddly and snuggles up against you and sleeps sweetly. She is still pooping and peeing. But that breathing thing is just too hard for her right now, so she struggles for every quick gasp, and between the struggle for breath and the struggle against the nose suctioning, she is just plain tuckered out. Sadly, one of the best things for her is the nasal suctioning because not only does it clean out her breathing passages, it also makes her cry and crying causes some pretty big breathing.
I spent several hours with Jessie and her girls on Friday and again on Saturday, hoping to give Jessie a chance to catch up on her sleep. But by Friday night, Cailin had been diagnosed with the ear infection and on Saturday night, as I held her before leaving for home, I looked at her closely and watched her for a few minutes and with no prompting on my part, I had the clear thought that Cailin was going to get more sick before she got better. And she has. But, she has a good mom, good nurses and respiratory therapists, and all of us to help in any possible way.
Can I just say that there are times when I feel overwhelmed by that thing called, The Human Condition, and then there are other times when I feel the concern so focused that it might be confused with a laser beam?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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3 comments:
Poor baby. Lucky Jessie, to have you, and lucky Caitlin, to have her mom and grandmom.
Give Jessie a hug for me, this has got to be a hard time! (word verification, copecruc. You all are coping, but what a cruc to have to deal with!)
That is a beautifully painful way to put it. Love = concern = pain = happiness. We get it all and we get more of it the people we love. My thoughts are with your poor little baby. Don't you wish you could put them in a bubble? Even your adult kids? Maybe let them out when they were, oh I don't know, maybe 70?
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