After Charlotte's first open heart surgeries there was a portion of her incision that just didn't want to heal. In order to help the process along, they decided to hook her up to something called a wound vac. Basically it was a contraption that attached to her chest and provided constant negative pressure to the site, promoting the healing process. Children's hadn't used this contraption on a baby to small (~3 weeks) but it was just what she needed. We came home with the vac for 1 week before we were cleared for normal dressing changes. During that week we carried around a bag with the actual pump in it and juggled the chaos of a new heart baby coming home along with cords, careful sponge baths and fear that we would accidentally pull something in the wrong direction in our day to day activity. I never took a picture, but just envision something very "Iron Man-esque". We called her Iron Baby. The picture below shows the tube that connected her to the actual pump. Awkward.
Fast forward 2 years to the arrival of Mr. Harrison. We had a healthy happy baby and never expected to welcome cords back into our lives. Wouldn't you know...jaundice snuck in and our little yellow baby needed something known as a bili belt. While definitely not as big of a deal and less invasive than the wound vac, there were still cords, plugs and general awkwardness! Not to mention lots of flashbacks of our days with Iron Baby. Luckily Harrison only needed his light for about 24 hours before his bilirubin normalized and he could be officially unplugged.
Here is a picture of our little glow worm with his belt. If he could talk, I'm guessing that he would be saying something like "Take that jaundice!"
Umbilical cords. Electrical cords. Cords. Cords. Cords.
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