Emma's Surgery Follow Up

We were so good at documenting Emma's time in the hospital, but now that we are home it has been much harder to stop and blog. Emma healed quite a bit in the hospital, but she still had a ways to go when she got home. She was still in a lot of pain and needed the Lortab for a couple of days, and then Tylenol and Advil. Much of her struggle was in the emotional department, however. She hated her crib, the changing table and pretty much anywhere that reminded her of her stay in the hospital. Even if she was completely asleep when we put her down, she would wake and scream in terror. I took away anything that reminded her of her stay, including toys, blankets, and anything that was present at the hospital. I also started using a new lullaby CD. It took about two weeks for her to get used to her crib again. Now she is sleeping in it again and not afraid.

We got great news when we took her to her surgery follow up appointment two weeks after her discharge from the hospital. She looked great, was healing well, and has a great prognosis for the future. We were told it was finally time to let her just be a kid! Her defect was successfully repaired, with the exception of severe regurgitation at the pulmonary valve. That valve is a wait-and-see situation. She may need a replacement as early as five years old or as late as 30 years old. They will watch the ventricle size, as it will stretch and get bigger over time because of the blood leaking back into it, when it gets too large they will need to operate. If she is full grown by the time a replacement valve is needed, it will most likely be put in with a catheter through the groin, if she is still growing it will be open-heart once again.

But for now, Emma is a kid--a kid that will find her own limitations and not be limited by us. We have been thrilled to bring her out into the wide open world! She can be a little shy because she was inside for the first six months of her life, but she is really a little flirt at heart. In the hospital, she would put her arms over her eyes and hide from new people. Now she does that less and less. She has no restriction on her due to her heart defect and she is on no medications.

Starting today, her sternum is healed enough to pick her up under her arms once again. That took six weeks. We are also loving seeing normal baby stuff; she is teething and has one lower tooth already through, and she is getting over a nasty cold that ran through our entire family. Emma loves her baths, and splashes like a mad-woman in there. She loves big brother Triston and Daddy and Mommy.

Oh, EKG's don't hurt! I wonder if I can pull all these cords out of the machine?