Home at Last!

We have had a great first 24hrs at home! We are so thankful for our friend, Rebecca, from our small group at church to come pick me and Ethan up at the hospital yesterday afternoon since Dan's out of town for work for a couple days.

Ethan is enjoying being back home in his own familiar surroundings. Last night, I let him take a long bath (just had to be careful to not submerge his chest in water) since he'd only had a couple sponge baths in the hospital and had not had a chance to get his hair washed in nearly 2 weeks (poor kid!). It was hard convincing him to go to bed last night because he wanted to play with every single toy for a little bit but after the bath and bedtime Bible story, he fell right asleep.

Ethan was able to sleep 12 straight hours and I slept 9. Another friend from our small group, Kyla, came over this morning to watch Ethan for a couple hours while I went grocery shopping. We have another friend from church coming to bring us some dinner tonight! 

Ethan's much more active now that he's home, but still has some trouble bending over and also sitting/standing on his own. He also has been walking hunched over for the past couple of days. He doesn't say he's in any pain so his nurses think he's just being protective of his chest and will straighten back up over time.

We have a post-op visit with our pediatrician this Wednesday. They'll assess how he's doing and also remove the sutures from his 3 chest tubes. Then we'll have a follow-up visit with his cardiologist at the Raleigh Clinic at Wake Med at the end of this month. The only meds we came home on are Lasix and Aldactone. Both are diuretics that we will eventually be weaned off of, which is good because Ethan puts a pretty big fuss about taking them and we have to take them twice a day.

Thanks, again, for everyone who has followed our blog and prayed for us. Now that we're home, we'll still keep the blog going but will not update quite as often. Hopefully, our updates will be more  about life and less about medical stuff for a while. We look forward to slowly getting back into a routine with fall just around the corner. We are supposed to stay home/away from large crowds & obviously ill people for at least another week, then we can start going back to church, Community Bible Study, & more. We look forward to seeing all our friends again! Ethan still will need to take it easy once we resume those activities - no rough play, no playgrounds, no sports, no tricycle riding, etc. for another 6 weeks while his sternum heals completely (just in time for the new baby to arrive!), but otherwise, his nurses want him to stay active to keep the fluid build-up in his chest at bay.

First Bath

Aunt Jessica and Uncle Brandon brought us dinner Friday night and ate with us! It was nice to have the adult interaction and not have to cook either! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! After dinner, Brandon got to feed Ethan a bottle for the first time. Then he and Dan went upstairs to shoot some pool while Jessica and I hung out with Ethan. After they left, we started on Ethan's bedtime bath.

Up until now, Ethan's only been having sponge baths because his umbilical cord refused to fall off until Wednesday of this week. He hasn't been enjoying the sponge baths too much, so we weren't exactly sure how he'd handle a real bath. We were glad to find out that he loves it! He was a little fussy when we were undressing him (as he always is - guess he gets his modesty from his mommy!) but as soon as he felt the warm water, he quited right down! Mommy did the bathing and daddy was the photographer - pictures are sure to come!

One month old!

Well today, 9/11/07, Ethan is officially one month old! He has had lots of "firsts" today. To start, Ethan's home nurse, Linda, came to visit. She will come back weekly for weight and pulse ox checks and we can call on her any time we have any questions in between. If Ethan had come home with the NG tube, she would also be available to assist with changing the tube and addressing any problems/questions we had about the feeding tube, but fortunately we don't have to deal with that!

Also, Ethan had his first bath today in his new little bathtub we received from one of the baby showers. Mom and I thought this would be a pleasant experience for him but he screamed and cried the whole time - I guess because he was naked and cold (two things he really doesn't like). Until his umbilical cord falls off, he can't be sitting in water so it was more of just a sponge bath (which he's had before and didn't fuss nearly as much).

Tomorrow, we'll be heading back over to UNC - but only for a visit with our friends Crystal and Ben and their HLHS baby girl, Shelby Glover. If you've been reading our blog regularly, you will remember that we met Shelby and Crystal a few weeks ago when Shelby came for her pre-surgery heart cath and they stayed at the RMH the night before the procedure. Crystal just got news today that Shelby's getting ready to have her 2nd heart surgery on Thursday and they hvae to be at UNC tomorrow for a pre-op appointment. We're going to visit them tomorrow night to support Crystal and Ben and to let Ethan and Shelby meet for the first time! Please be in prayer for their family. At 5 months old, Shelby is a very sweet, healthy looking little girl. We can only imagine how hard it is for them right now to see their daughter undergo the Glenn surgery and to wait for her to get through the surgery and go to recovery so they can see her again. Going through the first surgery (the Norwood) was hard enough on both our families, but the babies were so young that we didn't really have much of a relationship yet. Shelby is a real little person now, with a personality and character all her own. Before we know it, we'll be following in their footsteps as long as Ethan continues to do well.