Ruthe's still under the lights. She still hates that stupid mask. Although, they did decrease the amount of light on her. She still needs to go down a few more points before they take them off completely.
It's hard to take a picture of her when the lights are on. The camera only picks up whatever happens to be under the light. Exhibit A.
Ok, so that picture's not so bad... but that was from earlier this morning with two lights shining down. Now that there's only one light, the circle is much smaller and you can't get more than half her body in the shot. And it's just the middle-half... no face and no legs.
They had to put in a new IV to give her some blood. It's not a bad thing, she's not losing any of her own blood. Not much, anyway, when they prick her heel. Her hematocrit is just lower than they like for it to be before babies go in for surgery, so they're trying to boost it. I tried to get a picture of all the lines going in. The dark red one is the blood going into her hand. The rest of them are going into her leg, with meds and baby-gatorade, and lipids.
I said on Facebook today how I'm pretty sure working at the plasma center in Rexburg prepared me for all of this. It's kind of a strange way to look at it, comparing finger-sticks on fully grown adults to pricking the tiny heel of my precious little baby who can't even cry out loud to tell us how mad she is about all of it. But the nurses always ask me before they do something like that if I'm squeamish around blood. And I thank the plasma center for being able to say "No." confidently. I feel like the times I'm standing next to Ruthe, rubbing her head and holding her hand, as a nurse is milking the blood from her heel go a lot better than the times she has to be alone while they do it. I don't like watching it, but at least I don't have to dash off to the bathroom, or worse, pass out!
This morning they had to put in that IV in her hand, and I watched the whole thing. It's pretty sad, watching your baby struggle because they have no idea what it is but it hurts and oh my gosh just stop poking me for five minutes! Since baby veins are so tiny and hard to see or feel, they used a light under her hand to shine through and show where a good vein was. You know how if you put a flashlight up against the ends of your fingers or your ear or something not-too-dense it kind of glows red? It was exactly like that. Only her entire arm was glowing!! That's how tiny babies are. Some things just put it into perspective.
I got sick and tired of all the doctors and nurses accidentally saying "he" or "him" today. Like three of them did it. I know all babies look the same, and unless they're dressed in pink or blue nobody can really tell. [Sometimes even THAT doesn't help.] But I didn't like it. So I fished around in my diaper bag and found this adorable hair clippie to add a little femininity to Ruthe's look. It helped. And made her even more adorable! :)
John and I just got back from our nightly hospital visit. Ruthe's still under the lights, but her numbers are going down, so she should be off them sometimes tomorrow. Fingers crossed. As soon as those lights turn off I'm gonna snatch her right up and snuggle her close for about seventeen hours. Well, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration... I can't exactly just pick her up all willy-nilly. It's quite the process, and generally takes three people to juggle the baby, her IVs, and her breathing tubes. But I'd totally snuggle her for seventeen hours straight if I could. I'm not exaggerating on that one.
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