Of meetings, partings, and the best-laid plans

April here.

Right now it is 3:35 a.m. and I am between the taking of vital-signs at 3 and the taking of blood at 4 a.m., so I thought I'd stay awake and try to put together a blog post. Dennis figured out how to get into the hospital's free wi-fi system last night, so we'll be able to post more pics at some point -- as soon as we get the USB cable to hook up our camera. I managed to leave that at home. Packed everything else one could possibly never need in the hospital, but left the cable at home, apparently in a spot where others can't find it. I think Dennis will go home today for a bit, though, so maybe we'll have more pics tomorrow. Or maybe not.

Anyway, we are all doing pretty well here. Thank you so much, all of you out there, for your prayers and love at Grammy's passing. It was difficult to be here in the hospital and not with the family, but I would say, honestly that I am very, very, very thankful that Grammy is Home. And I think the whole family feels that way. Her trust in God's goodness and provision was very real. That comforts all of us, even as we miss her.

Here at the hospital, little Emmeliese is doing better this evening. She was ok at birth, and then had some problems with oxygen saturation and a rapid heartrate. She is, currently, in the nursery hooked up to an IV and a monitor and is receiving antibiotics, which is a good thing, since a blood culture indicated that she has some sort of infection. We hope she'll be able to be unhooked in the next two days or so. She has not nursed yet and has been fed only twice by Daddy with a feeding cup. I am anxious to work on latch-on, etc. with her, but more anxious to just hold her for a long time. This evening, about 9, I finally got to hold her for a while. Before that, I had only held her for about 10 minutes, and had only been with her for about 20. I hadn't realized how much the separation was affecting me emotionally. I've been so weepy today. I think I've just been missing my little girl.

Other than being a big cry-er, I have been recovering from the C-section fairly well. The induction and the labor actually went according to plan until about 7 hours in when I got stuck at 5 cm. We ended up with the surgery because Emmeliese never engaged the pelvis at all. After 13 hours of labor, her head had still never touched the cervix and she hadn't moved down at all. It turns out that, while she had turned head down in the Great Baby Turning of 09, she was also turned sideways somehow and her head was tilted in such a way that it just couldn't leave the uterus. I had some unique experiences of having my water break by itself and having an epidural that, though it took a very, very long time to get in, actually worked PERFECTLY. I basically got to doze for 6 hours while the pitocin created nicely spaced, intense but-not-too-excruciating contractions. That was really quite nice.

When we decided to do the C-section, we found that her position made it impossible for the docs to do a transverse incision on the uterus, or my belly, so I ended up with two vertical incisions. I'm moving slow. Very slow. But the C-section has given me yet another chance to observe my husband as knight-in-shining-armor. He just rises to meet every occasion with patience and determination and thoughtfulness. He's amazing. I am so blessed to be the mother of his children.

As for how long we'll be in the hospital, we are hoping to be able to leave by Sunday. Dennis took this week off of work, thankfully and I'm hoping we don't have to stretch into another week. We're going to be having a memorial service for Grammy on Sat. Mar. 21, which, we hope, will give all of the family the time we need to get there. Grammy donated her body to science and so we do not have the normal time constraints associated with funerals, burials, etc. I had agreed to officiate the funerals of Grammy and Gramps several years ago, but, given the circumstances, am sort of scaling back my involvement to just delivering the homily. Probably. I think I can do that. I've been thinking about what to say about them at their memorial services for a long time. Hopefully, I can gather my thoughts and get something worthy of her memory created sometime next week. We'll see how everything progresses.

So. Thus ends my long and somewhat scattered missive. Thank you again, all of you, for your prayers, love, support, etc. It means a great deal to me, Dennis, and our family.