We're Home!

Thanks everyone for all your prayers and words of encouragement over the past 4 weeks that we've been at UNC (and even during labor and delivery). Dr. Stewart told us to plan on staying in the hospital 4-6 weeks after delivery and we're so thankful that it was only 4 weeks! God has been so gracious by answering prayer after prayer that has been lifted up during this time - including my prayers last night that he'd continue to do well off the oxygen and that we'd get to go home today or tomorrow.

Ethan has been doing very well ever since his heart cath yesterday morning. As we mentioned yesterday, he didn't need any oxygen during the procedure, but the nurses did put him on .1ml for most of the day while he was sleeping and trying to come off the anesthesia. By 6pm last night, they took Ethan off the oxygen to see how he would do and he made it all night long without needing any oxygen!

At 8:45 this morning, the attending doctor, Dr. Smitherman called us to let us know the good news that Ethan was ready to go home! So we packed up our belongings and cleaned out our room at the Ronald McDonald house and headed over to the hospital. We got to UNC by 10:45 am, gathered up his and our belongings, waited for his nurse to get out of a meeting, received our discharge papers and final instructions and were out of there by 12:15 pm!

For those of you who don't know, my (Julie) parents have been living at our house since July 4th, while their new house is being built. This has been a blessing so that our house hasn't had to sit empty for the past month and we didn't have to pay anyone to watch our dog. We surprised Mom and Dad this afternoon by not giving them a courtesy call, we just walked in the door with Ethan! Mom and Dad will close on their new house on Monday, Sept. 10th but will wait until next Friday, Sept. 14th until they move out so we'll be able to have a little extra help as we get used to having a baby at home with us.

Now the real fun begins as we get settled into our own routine here at home where we all belong! We will have monthly pediatric cardiology appointments with Dr. Robinson at WakeMed Hospital, which is much closer to home than UNC (15 min. instead of an hour drive). Ethan's first checkup will be next Thursday morning. We will also be scheduling Ethan's first pediatrician appointment for sometime that same week, preferably before the cardiology appointment. We will continue to monitor Ethan's oxygen sats during the night when he's asleep, and also a few times each day when he's awake and calm, just to make sure things are still looking good. We have a huge oxygen tank and several portable tanks, just in case we need it.

We will continue to give regular updates on Ethan, but it may not be daily now that we're at home. Just know that "no news is good news". Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We've made if over the first hurdle (Norwood surgery) but we've still got 2 more surgeries to go (one in about 3-7 months from now, and another about 2-4 years from now).