This is our life. Sunday 4/5

Hello from Wisconsin!

Yesterday and today have mostly been waiting and recovering. The doctors each stop by once (urology, orthopedics for the cast, and pain management) and then basically the nurses leave us alone except when I need to feed Natalie. It's a pretty cumbersome process. Here's how it goes:

* Call the nurse to help get Natalie out of bed and in my lap.

* Call the nurse to help turn Natalie to switch sides.

* Call the nurse to help get her back in bed when she's done eating.

* Change Natalie's diaper (it's a 2 person, 3 diaper dealio at this point but I'm hoping to go solo soon).

* Rearrange the zillion blankets and rolls of foam to reposition her. We have to change her position every couple hours to keep the cast from irritating one area too much. We tilt to the left, then next time to the right. The picture below is her in the middle with legs lifted.

This whole feeding, changing and positioning takes about an hour or so. It's somewhat annoying to have to wait on the nurses to come help with each step but I may not need there help as much from now on. They took out her epidural this morning (she's on oral pain meds now). With the epidural line went all the others including IV and monitors so she's free now. It's still cumbersome moving her around and I've still had a nurse help me get situated but I'm hoping to get the hang of it on my own with a couple more tries. Even though she is not hooked up to anything anymore I still just feed her and get her back in bed. Her cast is quite heavy and awkward and it's hard to hold her very comfortably--for her or me. She pretty much just goes back to sleep anyway which I'm glad of for her sake.

I know she's not looking really happy in these pictures but I have gotten a few more smiles out of her. I was waiting until she was more awake and feeling like herself to post pictures of her. I have to say she has been handling all of this very well. I keep getting comments on what a content baby she is. She really has been a trooper for all that she's had to go through.

My little corner of the world:

I've been sleeping here in Natalie's room the last two nights and it's actually going a little better than I thought. I can tell it's not going to work to sleep over at the Ronald McDonald house but it's been very helpful in other ways. I go over and take a shower every day and I'm able to keep my suitcase there and just have a little place where I can have a few moments of privacy. It's a nice walk and good to get out. So far, Natalie has never woken up while I'm gone. I try to keep it to an hour or under. Most nights they have a free dinner there provided by a local corporation or church. Tonight was the first night it worked out for me to take advantage of that. While I've had many dinners provided by personal friends and I've gone to plenty of potlucks I'm not sure I've ever been in a situation like this where I was on the receiving end of a group charitable dinner. It was humbling and I was very very grateful. I saw the volunteers from the church group serving food and cleaning dishes and somehow it seemed like I should be on that side of things.

Ronald McDonald room:

Well, I guess I'd better quit writing and just post this since I could just keep going and going.

Thanks for all the comments, e-mails and prayers. We are hoping for more quiet days of healing with no excitement.