Another Special Day

Today is yet another special day for our little family. One year ago today, I walked in to our daughter’s room at Children’s Hospital LA to our primary nurse, Brooke, and another nurse standing over my girl. As a parent of a NICU baby, your first thought is “Oh no, what’s going on?!” and I’m pretty sure I had that look on my face when I walked in because Brooke told me to hurry in and to be excited. She was going to call me and tell me the good news but didn’t want to scare me out with a phone call from the hospital, which can be scary. My baby girl had been extubated. Just as a reminder, Olivia had been intubated since birth, so the fact that she wasn’t going to have a tube to help her breath was a huge sigh of relief and proof that she was moving in the right direction. 

I walked to OJ’s bedside and just looked at her. This was the first time I had seen her without a huge tube coming out of her mouth and all I can think of was how beautiful she was. I always thought she was beautiful, but now I could actually see her whole face. She still had a feeding tube in through her mouth for the time being, but it didn’t make a difference to me. She was one step closer to home now.