~Day 2 of Ethan's Recovery~

This morning we made it into the NICU at 9:30am in time for the Dr's rounds. When we left last night at 9:45pm they were giving Ethan an additional dose of Morphine because you could tell he was experiencing some pain. It totally broke my heart and I left the NICU in tears.

This morning Dr Narvey and the other practioners told us that they were going to be decreasing his morphine by half to 10mcg/kg/hr, and also starting to wean him from his intubator. He is able to breathe on his own but because of the morphine he gets too relaxed and won't. So they are attempting to gradually wean him from both so that a) he doesn't have withdrawals from the morphine, and b) so that he can gradually take over his own breathing. They also told us that they are removing half of his staples this evening at midnight and the other half tomorrow night. A very good sign that he is healing quickly!

Our nurse today also told us that it may be as soon as this evening that they take him off of intubation and that we may be able to hold him tonight. I'm scared of the idea of holding him because he has sutures inside him and I'm scared of tearing them out but the nurse assured me that it wouldn't.

He looks really good though and all systems are a go. They did an echocardigram this morning to check out his heart because sometimes there are heart anomallys that go along with his type of fistula but it all came back great. So glad to hear that. We ran into his surgeon again today in the hall and he asked about him which made our day. What a compassionate man he is.

His little hand with Randy and mine.


Grandma Rogers got to hold him the other day before his surgery. Here is the pic of them cuddling in the NICU.


The morning after his surgery. Scary tubes and wires everywhere but doing the job to make him healthy again.






He got to meet Grandma Grounds yesterday as well. Her and Cliff came to the city to meet the little guy. It was a short visit but she'll be back again next week. Uncle Mike, a dear college friend of mine, is coming by for a visit tonight. It's his birthday too so we got him a card...Ethan's first card, LOL! We went to the gift shop today and bought a Stollery Childrens' hospital bear and another fun little dangly puppy dog toy to put in his bassinet. Both of us will now be upping our support for the Stollery Children's Hospital. We encourage our friends and family to do so as well...they are truly miracle workers!

Anyhow, thank you so much for your love and prayers. We appreciate all of the support coming in for our little man from all over. We can't wait to take him home and be a family!