Parker Willow Shook Merrick

Our beautiful granddaughter entered the world on Tuesday August 6th. She is, not surprisingly, absolutely gorgeous. She weighed 10 pounds, 10 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

She got off to a rocky start. Immediately after birth, the doctors determined that she inhaled some meconium, either in the womb or during birth. Meconium is a dark, sticky, tarry substance discharged by newborns. Apparently Meconium Aspiration Syndrome (MAS), something that I have never heard of before, is the leading cause of of death in full-term infants. Newborns can have respiratory distress and/or lung infections from this. So, a couple of hours after birth, they shuttled her off to the NICU for care. This was REALLY tough on Dan and Heather; they had no inkling that something like this was going to happen.

The real problem was that the doctors decided she needed to be on antibiotics for seven days - all in the NICU. Additionally, she needed a little help breathing.

Despite all this, little Parker is an absolute angel.  She looks like a little sumo wrestler. She’s alert and strong, holding her head up and looking around at the new world she finds herself in.

Parker Willow Shook Merrick, sumo wrestler in training

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This whole time was tough on Heather and Dan; they spent the time shuttling back and forth between home and hospital. We spent the time either running to the hospital and/or cooking and delivering meals to their house. It was a busy, stressful ten days for all of us.

This is the second grandchild in a row that ended up in the NICU; both got absolutely world-class care. Sweet Baby James, last summer, was born seven weeks premature and spent 17 days in the NICU. Like SBJ, Parker seemingly wasn't making a lot of progress toward breathing all by herself... until she was. Overnight, she decided she had had enough of NICU life and wanted to meet her brother Eddy (the dog!) and see what life at the beach was like; she was discharged yesterday (8/16) and is now safely home.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention anything about our other two grandchildren: Madeline and Sweet Baby James (aka Teddy). This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, around the time of Teddy's first birthday. Madeline is now six, and starts first grade in a few days.

Our original plans called for leaving SoCal on September 6th. We just decided, because of the delays in getting Parker home, to extend our time here another ten days - or more, if needed.