May 17 - Evening

20:58 -- Meaghan's in bed, The Daddy Phoo is en route to the hospital for his nightly pow-wow with his son, and my kitchen is starting to look less like a disaster zone, so I'll take a few minutes to update everyone. We traded visit times today, with Phoo going early and Me going in the afternoon while Meaghan napped. And while we've both been going straight into the nitty-gritty health issues that plague our beautiful boy with each new post, I'm going to start in a different direction. It may not seem like a big deal in light of everything that's going on, we did notice today for the first time that Max' hair is coming in RED. I would've bet that he'd have dark hair like my dad (since he looked just like him at birth), but it's not. The nurse said that as his health improves, it's natural to start noticing the normal baby things about him first instead of "oh there's another needle prick in his heel" type of observations. And the Davis genes are taking over, as Max is looking more like his Daddy everyday.

So all in all, today was a positive day (knock on wood), meaning it wasn't eventful and we didn't face a major health crisis. He had some trouble with his milk feedings overnight, so the night nurse did not give him milk at 01:30 or at 04:30. When the day nurse took over and consulted with Dr. R., they started him up again with 10 MLs of milk which he actually digested. HOORAY! Even better, he pooped twice today, indicating his body is starting to wake up from the pain medicine keeping him snowed since the heart surgery. The Nurse said that today he was the most awake she'd ever seen him and his movements were purposeful. He tried in vain to suck his thumb, as both arms are in stints to protect the IV lines. He appears to be swallowing now, another GREAT sign, since there was no perpetual mouthful of saliva to be sucked out. He opened his eyes several times for me which was just awesome to see. The Nurse sensed our optimism and joy and carefully reminded us of how serious his health condition remains, especially concerning his heart murmur.

I met with Dr. R. briefly who reiterated his game plan for the weekend, which is to get Max stabilized on the ventilator and breathing more on his own, and increase the feedings so they can take him off the TPN. I know Phoo didn't blog the contents of my conversation with Dr. R. yesterday and I'm too tired to try to recall it now, but where we are is really no different than right after surgery. The unexpected part was that Max recovered far better and more rapidly than anticipated. Dr. R. did divulge that given Max' blood loss, they were not sure if he would end up bleeding to death and everyone was again surprised that he healed as well as he did. Max did not need any additional blood products today - yet another good sign. Dr. R. said we'll just have to wait and see how he does over the next week or so and that his goal is to try to manage the PDA with the ventilator. The problem is not that the PDA is large (which it is) but that the volume of blood traveling through the PDA is jeopardizing his heart and health. Dr. R. said that he is trying to control the volume by tweaking ventilator settings very slowly, buying Max time to recover and the surgeons time to figure out if, how and when they'll attempt a repair. Dr. R. wasn't sure the surgeons who performed the first ligation attempt would even touch Max again. So the question mark remains.

For now, we'll just appreciate his progress, enjoy the moment and prepare ourselves for what tomorrow brings.