One week old!

Thursday, November 20
2:00 AM- I had to wake up and pump, and there were 3 or 4 nurses in the room, switching out Faith's IV. She'd had an IV in her right foot, but it stopped working, so they moved it to her left hand. I'm hoping they can keep switching it back and forth like that, and won't ever have to put it in her head... she has such beautiful soft hair, dark and lots of it, especially right on top and on the back of her head.
4:00 AM- I guess radiology came by and did an x-ray... Dave and I slept through it.
7:00 AM- The surgeons came by on their rounds. They said she is doing well.
Faith's nurses are Sarah and Erica again today.
Faith has a lot of "secretions" in her lungs today, so they have increased the amount of oxygen she is on. A respiratory therapist came in and suctioned her, and they got a couple of big mucus plugs out, and that helped. They said not to worry, it's not pneumonia or anything like that, it actually just has to do with all of the fluids they gave her during surgery, and the fact that she's on Atavan and can't clear her lungs. It doesn't help either that she pretty much has to stay in the same position (although they come in and turn her head and move her arms and legs every few hours), so she's pretty much flat on her back. They put her on Lasix to help get some of the excess fluid draining, which should help her be less swollen, and help clear some of the gunk out of her lungs.
She is also VERY swollen, which we knew to expect, but it's still hard to see her that way.

One of the nurse practitioners came in and told me about Faith's echo report finally. It turns out she has two small VSD's (Ventricular Septum Defects), or 2 small holes in the wall that separates the bottom two chambers of her heart. She said that it is nothing major (if it was, it would have meant something for yesterday's surgery) and in a lot of kids, it is something that corrects itself. It is the same kind of heart murmur I had when I was a baby, and I grew out of it, so I am hoping that Faith will grow out of it as well. She also has a slightly smaller than normal left pulmonary artery, the blood vessel that takes blood from her left side of her heart to her lungs. The NP said that most likely what will happen is that when we get to go home, we will need to follow up with a cardiologist and have another echo done to make sure the holes close up.
While the NP was in here, she took a look at Faith's belly button and showed it to me, so I took a picture. I will take a closer-up one the next time they change her diaper.

Faith's heartrate has been pretty high since her surgery, as her body is responding to the swelling and the pain. Dr. Potter came in to check on her, and he decided to have them increase her dosage on the Fentanyl, because even though she wasn't moving or showing pain (because of the Atavan), her high heartrate shows that she's feeling it. (I guess I knew what I was talking about when I was trying to find out yesterday why they hadn't increased it, huh?)
I had to run out to the camper really fast, to grab a couple of things and make sure everything was ok out there, and when I got back they had just finished her cares. Erica told me Faith had a really heavy, wet diaper from the Lasix, in addition to what came out through the catheter, so hopefully that means the Lasix is working and she will be less swollen soon.
It's hard to believe Faith is a week old already... in some ways it seems like it hasn't been that long at all, but then in other ways it feels like it's already been forever. Please keep praying that she does well, so she can come off the vent and we can hold her soon!!