Even A Hole in her Head Can't Stop Her

I know I've raved about my new baby granddaughter before, and I know there's a good chance you're all tired of hearing about her, but I hope you'll indulge me for a minute.You see, it was just one week ago that we found out my granddaughter had to have brain surgery. As brain surgeries go, this one isn't too bad, I guess. My granddaughter has a cyst that, so far, isn't bothering her at all, but the neurosurgeon has decided that it's growing quickly enough to be a problem in the future. Last week, he told my daughter and her husband that the baby needed surgery. Since Dad's going to be sent off by the Air Force for training in just a couple of weeks, the doctor scheduled surgery for Monday. We barely had time to catch our breath before it was time to check her into the hospital. More than once, I thanked our lucky stars that we live near one of the best children's hospitals in the nation -- maybe even the world. That didn't help a lot when we saw Mom carrying our tiny 16 pound baby down the hall in her hospital jammies, but it was the one thing I had to hang onto. I mean really! The doctor was about to drill a hole in the baby's skull! So we settled in to wait -- but we didn't have to wait long. In fact, the surgery was over so quickly that when we saw the doctor come into the waiting room, we all thought he'd run into some massive complication and had to stop operating. But the surgery went well, he said, and our big girl was recovering nicely. Mom got to go into the recovery room and hold her while she held up. Dad, Auntie Val and Grandmom stayed in the waiting room for a while longer. Then we were summoned and we met the intern wheeling the baby from recovery to her room. We didn't know what to expect, so when she saw us and smiled, we all nearly fell over. And when she held up her tiny little hand, bandaged up to hold the IV, to her Auntie Val for a high five . . . well, at least two of us lost it. But don't tell my son-in-law. He thinks I cry too easily, for some reason. My granddaughter was released the following day, and on Wednesday I drove up to the Base to spend my usual afternoon with her. I expected taking care of her to be a little difficult, you know. I thought she might be fussy. Uncomfortable. Even in a little pain. I didn't expect the difficulty to come from the fact that she was running at full power and grabbing, reaching, stretching, pulling (grandmom's hair) and playing as if she'd never even heard of the hospital. In fact, what she really wanted was for me to hold her upside-down, which is one of her favorite games. (I didn't, of course. She might not notice the hole the doctor drilled her in skull, but I can't forget it's there!) All I can say is that kids and modern medicine are amazing!

Welcoming Baby Wonderful

Just when you think you're catching up with life, somebody throws you another curve ball. I've been off the internet for a couple of weeks now because my very first grandchild decided she needed to come into the world 13 1/2 weeks ahead of schedule. We spent several days in the hospital trying to convince her to be patient and wait, but this little girl knows what she wants and she doesn't take no for an answer. Baby Wonderful arrived after a mere 97 hours of labor, weighing a whopping 2 pounds 9 ounces and stretching to a grand length of 14 1/2 inches. We won't be bringing her home from the hospital for a while yet, but she's doing well and already growing. I'm absolutely thrilled to be a grandmom for the first time, and I'm not bragging one bit when I say she's just about the prettiest baby I've ever seen! I can't wait until she's out of the isolette so I can take some books into the NICU and read to her. While my daughter was in labor I received a phone call from my mother letting me know that one of my cousins had died. Gary was one of those larger-than-life people who fill a room with their personality when they walk through the door, and I'm going to miss him. We had one fairly uneventful day, and then my dad fell and broke his ankle. He's 81 years old and suffering from congestive heart failure, so he's been in the ICU for the past couple of days waiting to stabilize enough to undergo surgery. The surgery was this afternoon, and his doctor tells us it all went well, which is good news. They've installed a metal plate in his ankle that will stay there for the rest of his life, and he's not allowed to even attempt to walk on that foot or put any weight on it at all for at least two months, so now we begin the next-to-impossible task of keeping my very fidgety dad in bed and off his feet for the next 60 days. It's been an emotional couple of weeks, filled with ups and downs, highs, lows, and lots of tears -- the good kind and the not-so-good kind. I've divided my time between the Newborn ICU and the regular ICU in two hospitals 20 miles apart. I lost track of the days a long time ago, and I'm never sure what day of the week it is, but I suppose this, too, shall pass. Before you know it, three months will have passed, Baby Wonderful will come home and so will my dad, and life will settle down into a nice, smooth routine again. And if you believe that, I have some lovely swampland . . .

The Miracle of Ultrasound

I saw a picture of my new grandbaby today, and I'm in awe. The technology may have existed when I was pregnant with my oldest, but doctors certainly didn't do ultrasounds as a matter of course. I had one when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, but only at the very end of my pregnancy when they were trying to decide whether to do a C-section or not. So seeing a picture of my grandchild (who, according to the midwife is vigorously active) in these early weeks is mind-boggling. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that I could actually see her (or him.) Usually when I look at ultrasound pictures, I make a lot of mmm-hmmmming noises and pretend that I can see arms and legs and other body parts. But today, I saw a head and I saw a leg. Either ultrasounds are getting better, or I just had more incentive to find the body parts in the gray cloud! The midwife says everything looks good, for which I'm profoundly grateful, and my daughter can now stop worrying that maybe there's something wrong with her that only seems like a pregnancy, and really begin to absorb the fact that there's a baby on the way.