Friday, November 18, 2011

Healthy Heart

We had the post-op appointment on Wednesday.  Who knew that was an all day adventure?  We arrived at the hospital around 9:00 and left around 2:00.  It was quite the day, I'm glad I had my emergency supply of formula in my bag :)  Poor kid, he thought he was done with all that stuff, but here's the list of all he had done that day:

Blood work (which means a mean poke in the foot)
Chest x-rays
EKG
Heart echo
Nurse practitioner
Cardiologist
Wound specialist
Nutritionist

  It was an eventful day for this little man.  But it was a day full of good news :)  The cardiologist said his heart looks good and healthy!  The left ventricle filled up and is now the size/shape it needs to be!  The aorta is patched and works great!  The 2 holes are patched and his heart is a good heart!  Isn't that a miracle?  He's only 3 weeks old and he went from a heart that couldn't keep him alive, to a working healthy heart! His incision is healing up nicely too!  

The one problem he has is gaining weight.  He's still not to his birth weight and the doctors are a little worried.  They suspected it would be harder since he didn't learn about eating until 2 weeks after birth.  So we've changed some things so we can better measure how much he's eating and we're adding some calories to his milk.  I'm excited for him to be weighed on Monday because this kid has been CHOWING the past few days, which makes us so happy.  I'm sure he'll be right on track with weight gain.
    
We let him hang out with Pop-eye to motivate him to gain more weight and get big :)

This kid LOVES to stretch.  

3 comments:

  1. He is SO precious Janae! If I had $$$ I'd be out there in a heartbeat to meet him and to hold him so you could take a nap :) Love you, Janae! Miss you!

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  2. This is such good news!! I'm so happy everything is going great. You are all still in my prayers. He's so precious :)

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  3. HI Steve and Janae! This is Karlie (I am married to Steve's cousin, Adam). I wrote to Jeri to get an update on Nathan and she referred me to your blog. I am sooo happy to hear that Nathan is doing well. What a miracle! I am a NICU nurse, so I understand a little of what you are going through. You have handled things with grace and courage. I give you props for that. I hope things continue to go well. I well be checking the blog periodically if that's ok :) Little Nathan is GORGEOUS!

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