The other side of the bed.

This week, I've realized two things:
1.  I don't like the other side of the bed. 
2.  I've finally accepted that it is really the nurses who run the show. :)

Brendan, in just 6 full days of daycare, managed to come down with RSV.  (Respiratory Syncytial Virus)  He ended up getting pretty sick, and 3 days ago, Mike and I brought him to a local pediatric emergency department for evaluation (poor guy had his first fever of 100.8 and wasn't looking too well).  He was transferred to Children's and admitted to the NICU to take care of his respiratory symptoms.  He has already learned how to raise his mother's blood pressure and scare the crap out of her.  Thankfully I have a phenomenally calm (albeit only in the most dire situations...) husband--between the two of us I think we've done OK.  Mike really is a rock.  I'm really a sap (except when I'm taking care of other people's kids, then I'm much better).

We've been in the NICU for 3 days now, and today he's really come around.  The nurses took Bren off of oxygen today, and he's still holding his own.  He's getting fed primarily through a feeding tube, because he's been too congested to eat and breathe at the same time.  He has started to pick up nursing again today, though, and he should start to get significantly better in the next 24 to 48 hours (when hopefully we're home!)

Being a mother of a sick baby has been a humbling experience to say the least.  Not that I took parents' emotions lightly before Brendan, but it certainly has changed my perspective.  It is the most heart-wrenching thing you could imagine to see your child struggle to breathe and not be able to do much about it.  We both felt terrible about leaving Brendan at night, but I know that we have to take care of ourselves in order to take good care of our little guy.  As I left the hospital last night (for the first time since he was admitted), I missed him terribly--and then I thought of what it must be like to leave this hospital without your child forever.  It took my by surprise that I was even thinking of that, but here we were, exiting one of the top 10 hospitals for children in this country, without our baby.  I know that in just hours we'll be taking him home, and I feel so incredibly lucky.

We are lucky to have such an amazing hospital, literally right in our backyard.  The nurses and doctors have taking extremely good care of Brendan, and the people I work with have been so supportive as well.  We are lucky to have family that cares so much for us, and we feel everyone's presence out here, even though we're so far away.  I have noticed that Brendan has been smiling a lot in his sleep the last day or so, and we're lucky that he has Grandma Sullivan, his own personal extra special guardian angel, watching over him.  The NICU attending was just telling me that he was surprised how quickly little Brendan has recovered--I think that although he is the strongest little baby that has ever lived (he is, after all, Michael Sullivan's son), he has had a lot of help from his family that cares so much about him.