Sweet moments with Whitney

Whitney is slowly improving. That's what the nurses have been telling us. They are slowly taking her off her Dopamine medication and slowly taking her off the oscillator. Last night we visited Whitney and she was only needing 26% oxygen from the breathing machine. When Whitney was born she was on 100% oxygen, then she went on ECMO, and then when she came off ECMO, she was at 40% oxygen. Now she's at 26%. As a point of reference, the air that you and I breath is 21% oxygen, which is also the lowest setting. So that means that Whitney as of last night was only needing 5% help on the oxygen. This is really good.

Whitney was wide awake last night. I wanted to take lots of pictures and video, but by then they had already dimmed down all the lights, so any video would have been really dark and fuzzy. I took a couple pictures through.



Since Whitney was awake, we wanted her to see us both. Alicia and I sat on opposites sides of Whitney's bed. Whitney was looking at mommy for a long time and I wanted her to look at me, too, so I got up almost right in Whitney's face, but she just ignored me, and kept looking at mommy. Alicia and I switched spots so that I was sitting on the side that Whitney's head was turned to, but as soon as we did that, Whitney again ignored me and her eyes were turned upward as though wanting to look at the other side of the bed where mommy was at again.

Then I started to sing softly a few hymns from the Children's Songbook, and that's when Whitney started to look at me. Her heart rate was a bit high, but when I started singing to her, her heart rated dropped to a normal level and she seemed content. So I kept on singing and singing, Alicia sang along with me. It felt natural to sing to her, and I think Whitney knows that we're her parents.