July 10-16

I'm really starting to feel claustrophobic on Audrey's behalf. She is definitely waking up more now and pretty aware of her surroundings, so it drives me crazy that she is stuck indoors with the same four walls, same obnoxious sounds of alarms beeping, when there are so many beautiful things to see outside! I finally asked and learned, to my astonishment, that yes, there is a special stroller for NICU babies and yes, she might get to go on a little stroller ride around the unit and perhaps eventually even outdoors... what I really want is to take her to the Angel Garden by the main hospital entrance. Let her see the flowers, the fountains, the sunshine. Unfortunately though, the head nurse is very worried about the potential for her catching some sort of infection from the germy hallways outside the unit, and they won't let HER go out until she is free from the virus she had weeks ago.Still, I was excited for something, ANYthing, different for her from the same four walls in her little room, until we got the results back from her test showing that she was still positive for the common cold virus. She's been symptom free for weeks now, but they said babies with "compromised immune systems" which apparently she is categorized as, often take six weeks to finish shedding a simple virus like this.