Europe Travelblog  -

+ 5 - 4 | § ¶Everything's going great

It's been a great ten days since I last wrote.  Douglas's bandages and sterile strips and stitches and oxygen are gone.  We've had two appointments with the Cardiologist, and he can say nothing other than how great Douglas is doing.  He had an EKG and an echocardiogram this morning, and they both were fantastic.  His weight is good, his feedings are good, his sleeping is good, and he's very cute.

I've returned to work, which was difficult, but it's working out.  Since Jenny hasn't returned to work yet, she's getting a lot less sleep at night than I am.  She's figuring out how to catch up on sleep during the day while still taking care of our little one.  It'll be tough again when she goes back to work, but she'll be working only one morning and one afternoon per week, so her mother and I will take care of Douglas while she's at work.

I've also uploaded a lot of pictures from the past couple weeks to http://douglasfinney.shutterfly.com/.

+ 7 - 2 | § ¶No More Oxygen

Everything looked great this morning at the appointment with the cardiologist.  Douglas maintained 100% oxygen saturation levels on his own, so the supplemental oxygen is gone!  We get to get rid of a loud, large, hot machine that is the source for plastic tubing that trips us up and entertains the cats.  Also, Douglas's incision scar looks really healthy, so we don't need to wash it with betadyne twice a day and cover it with gauze and irritate Douglas's skin with tape anymore.

So, less than three weeks after major open-heart surgery, Douglas has no tubes, lines, gauze, or tape.  The only thing different between caring for him and caring for a typical baby is that he has to have some medicine twice a day, but even that isn't a problem because it's sweet and he likes the taste.

Yay!

+ 1 - 9 | § ¶The First Week Home

We came home a week ago, and it has gone too quickly.  Unfortunately, I'm headed back to work tomorrow, and Jenny will be taking care of Douglas alone from now on.  Well, not completely alone, because there are a lot of friends and family that will be lending a helping hand, but tomorrow is the day we try to figure out what normal means now.

The week has gone really well.  We started trying to get Douglas to breastfeed on Monday, and it started working on Tuesday (thanks in part to my mom's experience and persistence).  It's been so good to feed him naturally without the extra steps of pumping and using a bottle.  So, he's feeding naturally and making enough dirty diapers to make the pediatrician happy.

In terms of his heart condition, we haven't seen anything to worry about.  We're going to the cardiologist tomorrow for the first follow-up appointment, and we're hoping that Douglas will get a clean bill of health.  In particular, we hope that his blood-oxygen saturation levels will be high enough that we can get rid of the supplemental oxygen and the tubing that snakes through our house.

So, we have a healthy baby, a Daddy going back to work, and a Mommy doing a great job.  It's a good place to be.

+ 3 - 7 | § ¶We're Home!

We got home around 2 pm today, and it feels so good.  We're going to spend the next week getting to know Douglas better and keeping him happy and healthy before heading back to work.

Yea!!!!

+ 6 - 2 | § ¶We're Headed Home

They've given us clearance to go home!  It seems that the only thing we're waiting for is a machine to give him a bit of supplemental oxygen when we get home.  Being a Sunday, it'll take a little longer to get everything together, but it shouldn't be long.

Douglas Finney will see his home when he's 11 days old.

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+ 8 - 1 | § ¶Speed Bump

We've had a speed bump on the road to recovery and normalcy.  This afternoon, while I was feeding Douglas from the bottle, a couple nurses I didn't know came in.  Apparently, Douglas had gone into Arrhythmia - an irregular heat beat.  Instead of about 150 beats/minute, it was about 250 beats/minute, and the shape of the EKG was wrong.  The problem was supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), a condition in which the heart's electrical signals get into the wrong pattern, beating faster and less efficiently than it should be.  It's not lethal or an emergency, but it means that his heart is working harder than it should be.

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