holding our breath, and hoping she doesn't

we have been living in the hospital for eighteen days now.  shilo has been intubated for most of that stay.  and we have an end in sight.  hopefully.
right now they are still slowly weaning the vent, and shilo is initiating most of her breaths on her own.  tomorrow we will be changed over to c-pap mode on the vent.  this means she will be doing all the breathing, but there will be pressure to help her some because she will still be breathing through the tube (think of breathing through a straw) in her throat.  if that goes well they will attempt to extubate tuesday.
this is the part where we sort of hold our breath.  if she does well, great.  we are probably still here for a bit as we work on learning to eat from a bottle again, but we can be moved to the floor, where i will have my own private bathroom, and shower.  i will be able to hold my little peanut again.  the nurses won't come in every two hours.  they won't be taking blood twice a day.  lots of great things about this.
if she doesn't do well, they will inubate her again, and we will be scheduling open heart surgery for now instead of later.  so far she is tolerating the  wean really well.  and most of me thinks she will do just fine.  but i would be lying if i said i completely believed it was going to go perfectly.
the other fun thing that comes into this, is that shilo has not had a bottle in the eighteen days she has been here.  she was a champion eater before.  and we hope this continues.  but it is also possible that without sucking for so long that we have lost that ability.  and then we would likely be here through a g-tube surgery.
so really there are lots of things up in the air, and we are watching, our breath still held, and hoping that things land well.  we don't need perfect, just mostly good will due.

on a much funner note, our peanut is four months old today.  weighing in at around nine pounds, and looking more and more like herself every day.  i would post a picture, but the camera isn't here with me at the moment.