New Room!

This morning, Ethan got his A-line removed from his hip, so that's one less cord to get tangled up when we hold him! This afternoon, around 3:30, Ethan got moved from the PICU (2nd floor) to the CICC (5th floor). CICC (Cardiac Intermediate Care Center) is where Ethan will remain until we take him home. He still has a private room like in PICU, but this time it comes with a fold out bed/couch for one of us, as well as a full bathroom in-room. His nurse this afternoon said we're welcome to spend the night as much as we want, in fact one of us will HAVE to spend a full 24 hours here with him right before he goes home so we can learn about his routine for meds, feeds, etc.

Ethan's biggest goal at this time is to work on feeding and getting enough calories during each feeding. He should be receiving 26 calories every 3 hours (in a 2 oz. bottle) and it should normally take about 15 minutes for him to finish the bottle but his noon feeding today took me an hour and a half for him to finish the bottle so the nurse put an NG tube back in him to send feeds directly to his stomach. A speech therapist is coming to visit him in the morning to help him work on his sucking motion when taking a bottle. Feeding issues are a common problem for nearly all HLHS babies, but usually they have problems with swallowing instead of sucking. We pray that he will catch on to the sucking pretty quickly so he won't have to have the NG tube much longer.

Ethan's been kind of fussy tonight but he seems to quiet down pretty quick once one of us picks him up and holds him for a little while. It's nice to be able to hold him whenever we want, now that he's had most of his IV lines/monitors removed!

Keep praying for a speedy recovery for our little guy. We are constantly amazed at how smoothly this process has gone and how quick we were able to get moved up to CICC. His nurse in CICC said she expected him to be a few weeks old, not 9 days old! She said he's the best looking "Norwood" (name of his firt surgery) baby she's ever seen!