Go Tikva Go!

Tonight at 2:22 a.m. will be exactly 4 weeks since Tikva's birth.
For the past month, she has had a breathing tube in her mouth and down her trachea into her lungs.
Through this tube, she has been receiving breathing support from two different kinds of ventilators.
Until today, she has not had to breathe entirely on her own.
Until today...

Today Tikva was extubated, which is a fancy medical term for removing the breathing tube.
For the first time since those few seconds right when she came out of me on June 10th, I was able to see her lips and cheeks.
For the first time ever, I was able to kiss her lips and cheeks.
For the very first time, Tikva was able to breathe on her own.
Now she is breathing on her own.

She is still getting oxygen through a little cap that goes over her nose - it's attached to a tube and a hat and is called a c-pap.
She looks a little bit like she belongs in Star Wars.
The c-pap also gives her a little air when she exhales to make sure her lungs stay open.
But she is taking breaths all by herself and doing great.
She was definitely ready for this big move today.

And she is doing one other amazing thing: She is crying.
Her voice is hoarse from a month with a tube in her throat, but even so she is letting out little sounds.
In a few days, she will be wailing so loud they will probably have to move her out of the "super critical" bay of the West Wing of the ICN.
Her little cries are already music to my ears, and I can't wait to hear them grow louder and more powerful.
Can you imagine not being able to cry real cries for a month... as a baby??
I wiped little tears from her eyes with a smile, knowing that stress hormones are released in our tears.
I hope she lets herself cry until ALL the stress from the last month of her life is released.

When I called her nurse Jennifer to check in this evening, she told me that Tikva had figured out how to suck on a pacifier.
Another huge smile on my face, knowing that this is just the practice she needs to be ready for breastfeeding when the time comes.
I never thought I would be excited about my child using a pacifier, which I vehemently resisted with Dahlia, who thankfully never showed any interest in one.
But since Tikva hasn't been at my breast since birth like Dahlia was, sucking on a pacifier or on my or Dave's finger is the way she will learn to drink from my breast and a bottle.

Tikva is now up to 8 ounces of formula per day - two of the 5-6 bottles I have been filling with my milk each day.
She has another 2-3 weeks on formula before she can go back to my milk, as the leak in her lymphatic system finishes healing.
I can't wait until she can have my milk again... but not as much as I look forward to nursing her.
In order to drink from breast or bottle, she has to be taking less than 60 breaths per minutes.
Right now, with the work she is doing to breathe and develop her strengthening and growing lungs, she is taking about 80-90 per minute.
I have no doubt whatsoever that she will get there at the right time - when she is ready - in the same way that she's taken every step along her journey so far.

I kissed her a million times today - on her lips, on her cheeks, all over her soft body, again on her lips and cheeks.
I spoke to her a lot as she looked into my eyes.
I told her how proud I am of her, how proud I have been all along, how proud I will always be.
I rallied on the sidelines of her little layette as she cried, holding her hand and telling her she can cry as much as she wants to.
I played nurse and used the little suction thing to suck up the little spit bubbles she was making with her newly free lips.
I cheered for her when she coughed up her own goopies now that the vent is out of the way and there isn't a tube to suction it out for her - and no vent to cause more goopies from forming.

Crying, coughing, sucking, spitting, yawning - the most basic baby activities, and Tikva can now do them all she wants.
I appreciate these more than I ever thought I would.
They are the most precious reminders of the
REGULAR NORMAL UNCOMPLICATED LIFE
that is ahead for Tikva.
Today my girl is one step closer to coming home.