Another bump.

As I write this, we've been here in the CICU for 103 days. It's hard to fathom what we should be doing. Sitting at the table on a Sunday night, eating dinner with our 2 year old & breast feeding our 3 month old. I should be changing diapers and buying new clothes for the holidays. Watching football with my family and going to the pumpkin patch. Picking out costumes for the boys and taking them to the neighborhood houses. 

Instead I have an empty spot in my chest that longs for the feeling of having a new baby. There's an empty room with an empty crib. With a door that's always closed. (Michelle couldn't have said that better)! I don't know what it's like to rock my baby to sleep or play on the floor with my boys. 

103 days in the CICU is a long time. A long time for a sick baby, a big brother who doesn't even know what it's like to be a big brother, a father who wishes he was playing ball with one son and rocking the other, and for a mother, who so desperately holds it together, but feels like her whole world is falling apart. 

Eli remains on the breathing tube. We haven't seen a smile in a few weeks, we've never heard a laugh and a silent cry is how we know he's hurting. We haven't held Eli in 48 days. A touch that seems so foreign to us as parents. 

Today we've received probably the most devastating news in quite some time. Eli has been taken off the transplant list. A bad blood infection and NEC have stopped us in our tracks to a new heart. We pray Eli recovers quickly so that he can get back on the list and in route to a new heart. 

We would never know if a new heart came while Eli is unlisted but if so, we pray that God knew what he was doing and somewhere else, someone's Eli, needed it more. 

Xoxo