Our first night was pretty rough. Finley was uncomfortable and I just couldn’t sleep. My stomach was in knots and I spent most of the night praying. They had Finley in a bassinet and every few minutes she would hit the edge or an alarm would sound, waking her up.

Our day started early with different caregivers coming and going and telling us things my exhausted mind tried to process. The resident didn’t like how hard her little body was working to breathe, and wanted her evaluated to see if she needed to be moved to the PICU.

There is only one person who I haven’t just loved since we have been here, and it was the respiratory therapist who came to evaluate Finley. Her heart rate was remaining high along with her respiratory rate, and her oxygen just kept falling. He said she was fine and didn’t need anymore help breathing. I should have been more persistent then, but I figured since they were the professionals and knew what they were doing that I wouldn’t push it.

It wasn’t even two hours later that we had several people in the room trying to get her more stable. She was constantly coughing and choking and it took her whole body to work for every single breath. The head pediatrician was worried about how bad she was looking and how plain exhausted her body was, and we were immediately moved to the PICU.

The next two hours were fast paced and hard to watch. The PICU nurses were absolutely amazing, but my momma heart was still shattered watching everything they had to do to her.

They got all of her monitors hooked up, put in a cpap machine, and got an iv started in her head. I was able to hold in most of my tears until they told me I couldn’t nurse her. She had a high risk of aspirating milk and getting pneumonia, so for the rest of the day she would only be on iv fluids until they could start a feeding tube.

She looked so pitiful lying in that big crib, with so many wires and tubes coming out of her small body. We were technically allowed to hold her, but it made her uncomfortable and fussy so we needed to just let her rest in the crib.

For the rest of the day she did nothing but sleep, and sleep good! It was nice to see her getting rest, but heartbreaking to know the only reason she was sleeping so good was because her body was just that exhausted from simply trying to breathe. Putting her on the cpap gave her the relief she needed to relax and let her body fight the virus.

My two best friends had offered to come up and keep us company and bring Chinese food, but I told them they didn’t have to do that. It was already almost 8pm and they had already done so much to help us. Jake and I decided to walk downstairs to get something to eat, and when I opened the PICU doors they were both standing there with Chinese food and a book I had been wanting to read. Staying true to form of course I bawled. Our amazing support system has made all of this so much easier, and I’m so thankful for the friends and family we have.

The rest of the night she had a little more trouble, and a few times they had to raise her oxygen and do extra suctions. They offered us a family room to sleep in, but I couldn’t leave her side and we just tried to get a cat nap here and there on the fold out couch.

Tomorrow was day 5 and supposed to be the worst day, and I prayed so much over her little body to be healed and for this nasty virus to quickly leave her system. We had hundreds of people praying for her at this point, and countless messages of hope and offers to help with anything we needed.