Progression

We got a wonderful, long, night of sleep and awoke ready to go spend the day with our boy. He is doing a great job today. He did good through the night and his goal today is to get some tubes out and some extra IV's and stuff out of him. This is all great because it gets him closer to stability on his own. He is still getting help breathing with the ventilator, but less and less all  the time. They pulled out his stomach tube from his incision, also. This is great, because it is a very painful thing to have. Sidenote: The placement of his incision is probably the most painful kind of incision you can have. For this reason, one of the hardest things for Shepherd is going to be pain control. They will have him on some major pain medications like morphine to try to keep him comfortable. They try to keep a balance between not giving him too much while not letting him be in pain. It is hard to see his blood pressure go up and know he is not getting enough pain medication, yet I also fear for the difficulty he will have coming off such drugs if his body gets dependent. Pray for his comfort. If he does well without his stomach tube, they will take out his breathing tube. And if he does well with all of that, they will let him try to start eating. They will do this by giving him breast milk through a tube. 

So he's had a ton of great milestones today, and we're delighted at his growth. We did talk to a cardiac surgeon about the hole still in his heart. They did not fix that while in there yesterday because it is a small hole. But it if doesn't close on its own, or if it causes him any trouble, he will need surgery probably within the year. Please pray this is not the case. The surgery to fix a VSD is actually more complex and dangerous than the one he had yesterday. BUT for right now, we are just going to enjoy the view from here and marvel at what God has done. 

We got a chance to meet a number of families this afternoon, all of which have babies in the PICU, and all of which are staying at the RMH. It was wonderful to encourage them and share our Dr. Pepper and Starbucks (thanks Northwake!) We have so much care and generosity to us that they do not have. All of them were there alone and without help. We are so grateful for the body of Christ and pray we can share that with them in any way possible. 

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Picking back up after a couple of hours. They just tried to take his breathing tube out to let him breath on his own, but it is looking like they may have to put it back in. Since they took it out, he is having to work really hard to breath on his own. And his body is getting cold because all the blood is going to the lungs to work to breath. Please pray for him. Thanks

p.s. I'll add pics later