First ear infection

Well the time finally came. Poor Colt got his first ear infection. I would say getting sick for the first time at 7 months is ok. Still sucks but I know it had to happen eventually. He seems to have done pretty well with it over all. He will finish up his antibiotics on Friday. But poor little man is still very congested and has trouble drinking his bottle. I may call the doctor back before the weekend, even though im pretty sure there's nothing they can do about it.

He has just started sitting up in the last few days! It's so exciting watching him grow and learn new things. He's up to 6 ounces per bottle and he has between 4 and 5 bottles per day. Lately he seems to not really care for his bottle first thing. Still loving his baby food, though. He gets cereal twice a day at breakfast and dinner usually mixed with fruit. He doesn't like it by itself. And he will have a veggie at lunch time.


At the doctor last week he weighed in at 17 lbs 2 ounces and was just at 27 inches long! I think he's finally starting to catch up!! He loves watching cartoons in the mornings while playing in his exersaucer. He still doesn't have any teeth yet, but he sure is working hard on it! Maybe by the next post he will have one to show!!











































- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Since surgery

Ok, I'm not going to keep apologizing for not updating and promising to do better. Only because no matter what I just don't do it :( I don't know why. Anyway.


When we came home from hospital we were able to spend a couple days at home with Colt before we had to rush back to work. Unfortunately we have bills to pay :( He recovered really well and fast. For the first three weeks or so he was waking every 2-3 hours at night though. That made for two very tired parents. Of course he couldn't help his schedule got off. We would feed him each time, then he would only wake twice then once. Then he would wake a couple times and we would just have to put his passy back in. But, I'm proud to say he has been sleeping through the night completely since Sunday, woohoo!! He goes to bed around 7 and gets up around 6:30 or 7am. He wakes up very happy just talking away. I let him lay there and talk about 5 minutes or so before I get him. I love hearing him just chatter away. He loves to turn circles in his crib.

We couldn't pick him up under his arms for 6 weeks. That was tough and took some getting used to. It also set him back a little developmentally because he couldn't use his bumbo or exersaucer to practice sitting up. But no big deal. He's back at it now and will be sitting up in no time. He loves to roll! He's finally drinking 5 ounces each bottle and has baby food three times a day. He's gaining weight and the doctor wants us to watch him and if he gets too chubby we have to switch formula, haha. He's had his first pool and beach experiences and loved both!! Can't wait until next year when he can run around the beach on the sand :) He has even spent a couple days with his girlfriend Emery. They were both on their best behavior and loved being together all day, haha.

I am looking forward to the weekend so I can spend time with him. It sucks coming home from work and only having an hour or so with him at night. And one night a week I have to work til 7, (tonight) and he was already in bed when I got here :(

Have I mentioned he is 7 months old today???? Time is going by way too fast!! We are so blessed to have such a strong, sweet, happy boy. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers this last surgery and everyday. Hopefully we won't be back for another for two years. Until next time, enjoy some pictures of our precious boy.


























































- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Surgery and after

Surgery day went pretty well over all. We walked him down to pre-op around 6:15 am. He was so smart even though he was so hungry. It wasn't easy handing him over. We then went back to his room, showered and packed up. Then the waiting began. At around 8 we got our first call saying they had begun surgery and things were going well so far. We continued to get calls every hour on the half hour. They all said he was still in surgery and things were going according to schedule. At the 12:30 update they said we could expect it to last another couple hours. Then we got the 1:30 update. Then nothing until 3:30!! Then they called and said for us to meet surgeon in conference room of Pediatric Cardiac ICU. Finally alter another 15 minutes or so, the surgeon came in and said everything went as planned but he had a lot of bleeding. Otherwise things went great. Whew! A huge weight was lifted off both of us. We were able to see Colt about 30 minutes later.






He was pretty heavily sedated the next two to three days. He started acting more like himself Saturday but developed a high fever that night. We were pretty scared it may have been infection but after one dose of Tylenol it went away!











So Sunday afternoon he was his old self. Smiling and playing. Who would have thought the kid just had major heart surgery??






On Saturday he started with a milky discharge out of one of his chest tubes. It was more than likely from his feeds but they wanted to leave it in for observation. Finally Sunday night it didn't have hardly any drainage so they took it out Monday morning. They said they would just monitor him the rest of the day and he would go to step down the next morning. Well at 3am we get a phone call that scared us to death at first. They just wanted us to know they were moving him then because they needed his bed space and his step down room was ready. At 3am??? Guess hospital time is different from regular time. So drew went ahead to the hospital to stay with him and I stayed to clean and check out of RMH.

So we are just hanging out. Sharing our tiny cot. But it's worth it to be able to stay with him. The doctors are all very pleased with his recovery and we are basically just waiting for his lungs to get stronger so he can get off the oxygen. We are hoping to maybe be able to go home by the weekend!! Thanks so much for all your thoughts and prayers. Colt is a very strong boy and we are so blessed to be his parents.












- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cath day

5/1 11am
Well we are still waiting for them to come take colt back for the cath procedure. Been here since 9:15. It's now 11. Good thing we have a good baby. Somehow he hasnt started screaming of hunger yet. He's all decked out in his tiger gown and I just got him to sleep actually! Hopefully it won't be too much longer before they come.

Took him back at 1. Said would take at least 2 hrs. Called at 2 said they had started cath and everything was going smooth so far. Called at 2:30 said they were done! He did great everything looked like they thought it would.
He stayed in recovery for about an hour and a half or so. We are now in our own room. He's in a crib now so no room for a bed for one of us. We have the pull out chair thingy and an air mattress on the way. Not sure if we can get away with that but we are going to try :)

Colts doing well. Only needed Tylenol once so far. He's had 6 oz of pedialyte and only about one of milk. Hoping to get some more milk in him in a couple hours. I sure don't miss all the cords and wires attached to him. Or all the beeping on the monitors. Have any of you ever tried to entertain a 5 month old when you're confined to a crib?? Or how about rocking him to sleep??

We finally got him to sleep around 8, then they had someone come in at 9:45 to do an EKG which did not go well. Haven't they ever heard not to wake a sleeping baby?? Then they took him downstairs for an X-ray but Andrew was able to go with him. He drank about 3 ounces of milk afterwards and went to sleep around 11. He slept pretty soundly until 5:30. Andrew and I not so much. We only have the pull out chair to share. I told him tonight he's in the bath tub! It was a long day with many more to go. Very thankful it went as smoothly as it did. Praying the coming days do as well.

5 months!

Andrew and I celebrated our three year wedding anniversary on April 11! Wow, time really does fly. I can't believe last year we were in Asheville celebrating, and now we have a 5 month old! It sure has been quite a year. Who knew so much could happen and change in 365 days???? Colt is still doing pretty well. His congestion cleared up, and it's now back again :( Nothing we can do about it but wait for it to leave again. It seems to be allergies, but the doctor says he is too young to have them,so who knows. I'm not the professional. His eating seemed to pick back up though, which is good. He is drinking 5 bottles per day, only 4 ounces in each. Most babies his age eat much more. My days are usually spent texting Karen throughout the day to see how much he eats and stressing out about him not eating enough. But, we can't make him eat more. He still loves his baby food, now eating one container per day, sometimes more. The doctor says I shouldn't be worried about how much he eats, because he is obviously still gaining weight. Up to 15 pounds, 2 ounces today! And by looking at the chunker he obviously is not under nourished. I just worry anyway. This next surgery should help him to be able to eat more, so if so watch out scales, haha! There are some times where he will eat 5 or 6 ounces at a time, but then he will only have 2 or 3 ounces of a later bottle. It seems to always work out that he eats between 18 and 20 ounces per day. We have been doing a dream feed each night between 10 and 11 to get those extra 4 ounces in him. So, I finally have decided to slow down on the pumping. I only pump two or three times a day now, and have started transitioning Colt to formula. He has at least one formula bottle per day. As much as I would like to keep it up, I was just really tired of it to be completely honest. So we will see how long i'm able to keep getting milk just pumping so few times per day. They finally called to schedule Colt's surgery. He goes in on May 2nd for a heart cath, and his surgery will be the next day. Like I said before, I will be so glad when it is over. There is so much we have to do before to get ready, I don't really know where to start. We are going to drop the small dogs at my mom's this weekend. So sometime between now and the 1st we have to pack up for our temporary move. Hopefully a short stay. I have lots of questions for the doctor which we see on Thursday at Duke. I will try my best to update the blog daily while we are there. Please keep precious Colt and us in your prayers as we face this next surgery. This is an explanation of what they will do in the surgery. A lot of people have asked, and it's easier for me to copy and paste than try to explain myself :) "Doctors perform the second operation, the bidirectional Glenn procedure or hemi-Fontan, when your child is four to six months old. In this procedure, they connect some of the veins carrying blood from the body to blood vessels carrying blood to the lungs. This surgery allows most of the blood to flow directly from the body into the lungs. Blood with more oxygen is pumped to the aorta to supply oxygen to the body's organs and tissues. This approach reduces the work of the lower-right heart chamber (right ventricle) by allowing it to pump blood only to the body." Sorry about the huge paragraph for some reason blogger wouldn't separate paragraphs for me :(