For the first week after Camilla was born, I got scared every time the phone rang; I even got scared if I had accidentally left the phone turned-off. I was scared that the hospital was calling to say that she had taken a turn for the worse, or that she had died. Eventually I mostly got over this fear, largely because she seemed to be doing ok.

This past Tuesday morning the hospital called to let us know that Camilla had started having frequent episodes of apnea and bradycardia, meaning that she stops breathing for a while and her heart rate drops off. Shortly after we arrived at the hospital, she stopped breathing on her own and had to be placed back on the ventilator. Tests revealed that her cerebral-spinal fluid contained staph bacteria. She would need surgery to remove the reservoir from her head, since it was the most likely source of the infection. The surgery was scheduled for Wednesday in order to give the antibiotics time to work.

Today she is continuing to recover nicely. She is back off the ventilator and her breathing is great. They are feeding her a little bit and she should be back to full feeds very soon. The "external ventricular drain", which replaced her reservoir, is only a temporary solution and has risks of it's own, but it does have the advantage of allowing more gradual and continuous drainage. Instead of increasing in size, her head circumference has actually decreased by about 2 cm since the surgery.

I'll try to get more cute pictures tomorrow.