Thursday, October 28, 2010

What a Difference a Day Makes!

We all had a really good day today.  Daxton finished all of his bottles except for the 6 am feeding.  (He only had 30 of the 47 he is required.) His billiruben continues to go down and he now weighs 5 lbs. 8.7 oz.   Julie Duncan, the local lactation consultant performed some magic and got Dax to breastfeed very well at the 9am feeding.  A pediatric cardiologist from the Sibley Center by the name of Dr. McConnell stopped by at the noon feeding to examine Dax.  He is the co-director, of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Clinic at Emory.  He said everything is looking well and he did not feel the need to perform an echo, nor does he think surgery is warranted at this time.  He also reassured us that babies who end up needing surgery before 3-6 months still do well and he has many elderly patients who have gone on to live long active lives without much problem.  As long as Daxton keeps improving we should be able to wait until he gets bigger.  Dr. Fyfe said 11 pounds is ideal, but Dr. McConnell said the surgeons will always say “just one more pound.”  Their hands are only so small.  Daxton is what they call a pink tet baby.  That is, he is getting too much blood flow to the lungs instead of not enough.  Apparently TOF runs a wide range and his VSD (hole between the left and right ventricle is causing him more stress than the narrow pulmonary which he actually has decent blood flow through.
Bert got to go out for some drinks with his business partners Chris and Nigel while Jade had dinner with her Mom and Terry at Brio.  It was a much needed break for both of us and Jade went a whole day without a meltdown!  We are praying that Dax continues to have more great days like today. 

No comments:

Post a Comment