Babies first Christmas

Earlier in the week Karen asked Shania if she wanted to decorate her room for Christmas. Shania said yes, and one of the decorations she wanted most was her babies first Christmas tree decoration ,which is a baby in a stroller (Shania's grandparents gave this to her). Karen brought it in today and showed me, this little decoration brought back a flood great memories for me, like Shania's first moments when I got to hold this beautiful strong eleven pound two ounce bundle of joy. Karen had a slight fever after the C-section so they put Shania in an incubator, when I walked into the nursery I spotted her from the other side of the room, she made the other babies look like miney mee's. Shania opened up a whole new world to me and I loved ever minute of it.The first time she smiled with those big dimples of hers, The first time she crawled I was sitting on the floor with her, I had a bowl of m&m's and she was wacthing me eat them as we played, she decided she was getting some too, so she pulled herself across the floor a bit and I moved the bowl away, so she just got up and started crawling around after this bowl of M&M's. Karen was so excited about her first steps. I remeber the first swing ride, bike ride without training wheels, building a snowman, the first time she got to hold her baby sister at the hospital it looked like those dimples were going to jump off those cute little cheeks , so many fun filled firsts for us as a family that are just precious.
I can't wait to see dimples on those cute cheeks again, hopefully sooner than later.
Shania is very sick right now her cultures show she has a virus called HHV(Human Herpesvirus), a virus that is in most children by the age of two ,but lies dormant after that. It's now reactivated itself because she has no immune system right now and is being treated by very strong antibiotics, she also has a fungal infection in the sinus area which is treated by antifungal drugs, and to top it off they have found positive cultures in her central line (central line being a intravenous line that is in her chest that goes up and into a major artery in her neck).The doctors are going to wait to see if the virus goes away with the antibiotics first before they have to take it out. Yesterday Shania had a rough go of it, she had to go on oxygen in the morning because of low O2 counts, lots of doctors visiting, blood tests, ultrasound, x-rays, echo gram, catscan ect... So it was good to see her just sleep today. Her mouth and throat sores have worsened and is giving Shania ear aches, also She hasn't drank or had food since wednesday and is very weak. From what other parents are telling us, most of the kids go through this. We just keep hoping that this is the worst of it. She's on day five and won't engraft until at the minimum of day twelve. I truly hope that this is the first and last BMT.

Shayne,Karen,Shania&Shannon