Coming back....

He is playing with some toys...

Falling asleep in my arms and happy when I hold him...

Playing peek-a-boo a bit...

Looking in my eyes.

Not the most photogenic picture,
but do you see....?

The smile...

<3

That's my boy!!

Operation Re-Attach!!!

When a baby is born, he and his momma spend hours and hours together for months and months...

Each little interaction builds a child's sense of security and love....

It builds him up...gives him a "full tank" with reserves for those times when life gets tough...

Now imagine a baby abandoned at birth...

Laying in a metal crib in a sterile-looking room all day with a different person in a white coat feeding him each time...

not looking in his eyes and cooing and stroking and snuggling...

back in the crib...sometimes cries are answered...sometimes not...

for a year....

then all of a sudden...

someone comes...a lot...the same person...never in a white coat....she is always smiling...

she holds baby even after feeding time...working up to hours a day....even snuggling all night...

at first baby is not used to it and don't really like it....

But then starts to like it.

It becomes familiar.

And then....

BAM!!!

PAIN!

Tons of different people in white coats!!

A metal crib...arms tied down to stop from pulling out all the tubes and wires...

Ears on fire with pain...

Someone is still there...still smiling and touching and then holding....

but it is too much.

He has too few reserves.

He shuts down.

This is what happened to Henry these past 2 weeks.

If you ever had the romantic notion that it is all sunshine and lollipops once a child raised in an institution hits his mommy's arms,,,,give it up now.

Henry was VERY well bonded to me before this last PICU experience...we had gone through 2 prior hospitalizations in October and February and got through them without regression...

not this time.

He will barely make eye contact. He is whining whenever he is not eating. Sleeping is very disturbed (I think he had a "night terror" at 2am)...

But I am determined.

We were strangers 6 months ago and attached....

We can do it again...

I wore him in a sling for 6 hours yesterday....

fed him from my fingers after he made eye contact...

sang to him....rocked with him....cuddled (even when he did not like it!)

We will take him from this...

To this....

AGAIN!!!!!!!!

Because that's what love does....

as he will learn.

Home!!

Last Monday night actually...

Planned a big post all week...

But too busy...

too tired...

and now Henry has a nasty ear infection and cough...

My little guy can't catch a break!

He has not smiled in days...

So here&apos;s the deal....

After a bit of "prompting" from yours truly, Henry's medical team came up with a plan to get us out of here one way or another....

They put him BACK on the steroids he had been taken OFF of on Monday, noting that he started having more trouble breathing again Tuesday night...

Scenario #1: after 24-48 hours on steroids he is doing so well we start weaning him off oxygen and he STAYS off all oxygen for 24 hours... Then we can be discharged and find a way to get home :-)

Scenario #2: after 24-48 hours on steroids repeated attempts to wean off oxygen do NOT work throughout the weekend...Then we are looking at a medical flight to transfer Henry to the PICU at Children's Memorial on Monday....

Either way we get back home....

But obviously I am praying for #1...

Would love to have you join me!!

To inspire you, here is a pic of my sleepy boy napping on Mommy...

Still in the PICU...

Good news: Henry passed his swallow test and is not aspirating so we can keep feeding him! Yay!

Bad news: Henry needs to be completely off oxygen for 24 hours before we can leave... And a trial removal of his nasal canula a few hours ago did not work, so he is back on.

So can you all send up "Breathe Henry Breathe!!" prayers tonight please??

I miss my children at home (especially 3 year old Tessa) very much.

I have a really good excuse....

For being tardy with my Henry update.

We ended up in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at CHOP on Friday afternoon.

Henry was scheduled to have a sedated CAT scan and MRI first thing Friday morning and we were expecting to be picked up about Noon and to leave Philly to head home early Saturday morning...

Then the doc came out into the waiting area about 9am to tell me they had a very difficult time intubating Henry... His airway was incredibly tiny and the several tries needed to get the breathing tube in irritated his airway so much that he would need to be taken up to the PICU for steroid treatment to lower the swelling before he could be extubated.

So instead of finishing up my week, I started to truly experience Good Friday.

I am posting from my phone and it will only let me do one pic each post, so at the end is what Henry looked like sedated and on the breathing tube yesterday...

Except for once every hour when the sedation ran out and he freaked and started and tried to roll over and pull the breathing tube out while silently screaming...

Until 2 nurses held him down while a 3rd put him back under again.

It was brutal.

It went on for about 8 hours.

Until about 10pm when he was having more trouble breathing than earlier and an x-ray showed that the breathing tube was too high and was partially stuck in his cleft palate...

The original plan was to re-paralyze him and re-place the breathing tube until a more senior ENT doc could be there in the morning to supervise the extubation...

But 15 minutes later another doc said that Henry seemed strong enough to just ditch the breathing tube NOW...

So people started POURING into our little half of a shared PICU room... At least 9 docs, nurses and respiratory techs were crammed in and the extubation began...

It was a really brutal 15 minutes.

But it resulted in Henry breathing on his own with oxygen through a regular nasal canula...

I must thank my family and many friends (especially those on Facebook Friday night at 10:30pm) who rallied in prayer!!!

We are looking at another night in the PICU while he is weaning off meds and oxygen and hopefully discharge on Easter Sunday!!

And then coming back to CHOP on April 15 for a surgery on April 16...

And on that note I will cruelly make you wait a bit more for the next update....

Remember us in your prayers at the Easter Vigil!!!!

Wait for it.....

We have been at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) with Henry (and Sabrina-12, Ella-7, Logan-5, and Tessa-3) all week....

Lots has changed...

Lots of news to share...

But you will need to be patient and wait until I have computer access tomorrow to post.

In the meantime, please keep Henry in your prayers as he is having a CAT Scan and MRI under anesthesia tomorrow (Friday) morning...

And for your enjoyment here is a pic of a 5 pound chocolate bar from the Hershey factory!!