Ashley Unplugged

It's been a month since Ashley has been off of oxygen, and it's sure made a difference around the house having a cordless baby. Naturally it's made the daily routine go a lot smoother, and it's nice not to be changing tubes and cleaning filters all the time, but the real difference has been in her little disposition. She's always been pretty easy going, but since she's been free of the nasal tubes, she's been nothing but smiles and songs. We used to go through episodes where she would cry and scream herself pale when things would get especially uncomfortable for her, but since she's been unplugged, her ability to handle events like "snot suction time" have improved dramatically. She's still so cute and little, it's hard to believe that she's already 5 months old.

Edit: We blessed Ashley in church the same weekend we had Emma's birthday party, so she wasn't quite 5 months old yet, but she was still old enough to not want to be horizontal through it. We weren't really waiting for her to be off of oxygen before we blessed her, but it turned out that way as that particular Sunday worked best for everyone's busy summer schedules. We sure love that little monkey, and she looked so pretty in her little white dress.

She's been sick with a cough and a cold for ages it seems now. She had come down with something almost a month ago, and then she was over it for about a day and a half before she woke up with all the symptoms back in full bloom again. The poor girl isn't sleeping well, which means no one is sleeping well, but she seems to finally be coming out of the woods with it again. We took her to the doctor to make sure her congestion wasn't affecting her blood oxygen levels, and they reassured us that it probably wasn't, but we're going to take her back again, just to be sure.

I don't like talking about it much, and I'm not going to write much about it, but it looks like she is going to have to have her VSD's repaired in September, which most likely means open-heart surgery. That worries me to no end, even though I know it will be for the best. I just don't like the thought of her going through that kind of thing. Our cardiologist tells us that the recovery from that type of surgery isn't all that bad, and that some kids are out in a week, so we're trying to be as optimistic as possible. It just seems harder this time around because she's so much older now, and we've had so much more time to worry about it. Her first operation was performed within 24 hours of us learning that she would be needing one, and before we could even make it to the hospital in Edmonton, it was over. The surgery itself was such a blur, that outside of a scar under her arm, it almost doesn't seem like a reality. The recovery process has been very real, however. We just hope and pray that everything will continue to go well for her, and that this next surgery will be the final step for her little heart to get better.