Since we are still waiting for Haven’s chest drainage to slow down, not a lot of new things are happening.  They are trying to keep her nourished by replacing some of the protein she is losing through her drainage.  Evidently this is not as easy as taking a multivitamin every morning.  They are starting a special infusion in hopes that this protein will stay in her system longer.  Her white blood cell count is still decreasing- meaning she is getting over her little bout with an infection.  They have been “tanking her up” with new blood for the past couple days until she gets healthy enough to replenish her own blood supply.

 Haven stays pretty happy when she is awake unless we or the nurses bother her with routine care.  She doesn’t seem to mind the tube that sucks the crud out her breating tube, sometimes she barely flinches at her daily injection, and she handles a diaper change well, but you stick that thermometer under her arm pit and her little face scrunches up in dismay.  Bathtime is not necessarily her favorite time either.  She does not always care for all the involuntary movement that is required to clean in all those wrinkles.  Daddy and Mommy enjoy the time they get to spend caring for her and attending to the more mundane details of parenthood- like bathing and diaper changing.  We’ve learned a little too much about her medical care that we forget that every child isn’t born with incisions to clean, tubes to drain, and IV’s to change.  We have almost completed a draft for an alphabet book for Haven’s medications… A is for Amiodarone, Albumen, and Aldactone.  B is for Beta-Blocker and Bicarbonate.  C is for Captiprill, Chloral Hydrate, Cisatracurium and Calcium.  D is for Dopamine and Dobutimine.  E is for Epinephrine and Epical…