"...Every blessing You pour out, I'll turn back to praise..." this song came on as I was driving today and could not have expressed my heart more perfectly. We had Landon's three week post-surgery follow up with the cardiologist today. I am just so thankful and blessed.
I am thrilled to say our little miracle man is doing excellently. Dr Pliska was very happy with the repair that the surgeon's were able to do. There are no longer any holes in the center of his heart. One valve has very minimal leakage and the other is slightly smaller than normal but neither one is anything to be concerned about. All the chambers of his heart are normal size and there is absolutely no fluid surrounding his heart- so things drained properly after surgery. His echo shows that everything from surgery has continued to heal as they repaired it. His growth charts had showed a plateau or even a slight decline in his weight gain before surgery. He now has a huge jump and they are expecting him to keep climbing based on his progress so far. His incision is healing beautifully- we have had no signs of infection whatsoever. Normally, they would have had us go in two weeks from today for another check up with the cardiologist but since he is doing so well- they bumped it to three. We have the follow up with our surgeon this coming Monday and I am sure we will just be hearing more good things.
I have to say the whole ordeal has actually been easier than what I thought it was going to be. His recovery has been amazing. He is a different baby. He is STARVING all the time- so different to get used to- a wonderful different though! He used to go up to 5 hours between feedings and never complain about being hungry... and now- it is consistently every 2-3 hours and the 1 1/2 minutes it takes to warm a bottle makes him MAD because he is staaaaarrrrrvvvving! Plus we no longer have the tummy troubles we were having the first three months of his life and I have almost switched him over to completely formula. I am so happy to be about done with pumping- it is such a pain! As a friend of mine says, "I am a slave to the pump" I am down to just twice a day and the time it free's up is amazing- no more being chained to the chair for 20 minutes while the two year old gets into trouble every two hours...plus I don't have wash and sterilize all that stuff too. We made it to the surgery (and through flu season) on breastmilk- which was my goal. He is eating almost double of what he was eating before surgery in about half the time. We came home 6 days after surgery and within a few days- he started trying to roll over. He is soooo active and wiggly now. and HAPPY. Our little man is soooo very happy- he coos, blows bubbles, chews his little fists, drools like crazy, "talks" and smiles anytime anyone looks at him. If he thinks we haven't given him enough attention, he'll start to complain and as soon as you come over to him he just starts smiling and talking to you. He loves his big sister and will smile and talk to her the whole time she is near him. The more she bumps him around- the bigger the smile- sorta like he's thinking, "isn't my big sister so much fun?"
The adjustment of Nathan deploying has gone pretty smoothly. Of course, we miss him terribly, but life has settled into a predictable routine. I probably miss him the most when Ariana asks for him and I have to explain that he is "at work" and will be gone a long time, but we get to talk to him on the computer. She has loved webcam. We use yahoo messenger and you can also call through it so she is able to talk to her hearts content and tell her Daddy all about her little life- potty triumphs, Mona, shopping, what she did, who is the favorite stuffed animal of the day, etc. She brought him books to read to her the other day. She seems to have adjusted pretty well and I haven't really seen any acting out other than the normal two year old stuff we have already been dealing with. I know we will have yet another adjustment when Mom goes home but I don't think it is going to be too difficult. Mostly the lack of adult companionship but hopefully by two weeks from now, we will be able to get out more if cold/flu season proves to be over.
Thank you all so much for your love, support, help and continued prayers. We still have weeks of healing left but things are looking soooo good and his care is not much different than what it would be for a normal baby- more doc appointments and different ways to hold and burp because of his chest...but other than that we just get to lavish our love on him and watch him grow.
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