Gooder News

We've been here in Indy for over a week. Tomorrow will be a week in the PICU. Time for gooder news, that's what I say.

First, the update--the things we learned after we got back from the day pictured below. When I got back to the room, Silje had her nasal cannula (the tube feeding air to her nostrils) in her mouth and she was sucking on it. Silly girl! I moved it to her nose again and she got very grumpy. She looked like she wanted something to suck on. I gave her a pacifier. She's not very good at it, but she took it in her mouth and started chewing and sucking on it a bit. In most babies, this might not be remarkable. But just yesterday they were telling us how difficult it is for heart babies to learn this again after their surgeries.

Next, I noticed that the pacemaker had two orange lights (one for atrium, one for ventricle) instead of the green lights it has had up til now. The nurse confirmed that Silje's heart is indeed doing its own sinus rythmn, just not all the time. I'm not the expert, but I think this is a very good sign that she will not have to have a permanent pacemaker--another thing they were explaining yesterday that made us a bit down. If her heart takes over a bit better, and they can take the pacemaker off, then it's all the sooner over to the NICU again and one more step on the road to a very good recovery.

Also, they said that at 4:00 this afternoon, they were going to stop her infusion of TPN (food stuff straight into the blood via the heart), so she would no longer need the RA tube going to her heart (I think RA stands for right atrium). This is another step toward getting over to the NICU.

Finally, the nurse helped get Silje into her mother's arms for the first time since Thursday May 12th.



and Silje just looked so much more bright-eyed this afternoon than she has all week



So, things seem to be on an upward trend as pertains to Silje.

Meanwhile, Pam and Don brought Stian to us this morning for his first visit since last Saturday. He got to meet his little sister for the first time. Silje gave Stian a pink pig as a gift (he named the pig Charlie--it's a girl pig). And we went to a park in Zionsville, to an ice cream shoppe (Stian got bubble gum flavored ice cream--we all cringed) and then back to the hospital where we had some lunch in the cafeteria, mommy read Stian some stories and we all learned of the day's updates on our little girl.