Recovery

Thursday morning, I called the hospital to see how Ridge did over night.  They took the catheter out because he was peeing a lot and it was no longer a concern.  They still wanted him to pee more to bring the swelling down, but they weren't worried about the kidneys anymore. They wanted to remove his central lines in this left shoulder from surgery.  They are meant for short term use and the longer they stay in there, the more chance there is for infection. They couldn't remove those until they inserted a PICC line so they could continue to administer his medication and do blood draws as needed.  They also started to turn the ventilator down so that Ridge was having to do some of the breathing work on his own. Thursday afternoon when I got to the hospital, they had me sign the consents for the PICC line and then the team of nurses came in and tried to find a good vein for the line to go through.  It took them about an hour and a half and they tried both arms but were unsuccessful at getting the PICC line in.  Every time they tried to make the turn at his shoulder, the line would get stuck and wouldn't go through anymore. Because of this, Friday morning they were going to send him to interventional radiology that has a live x-ray where they can see exactly what they are doing as they do it.  They said that this usually leads to better results at being able to make that turn by the shoulder and getting the PICC line into the appropriate place.

Friday morning the radiologist was successful at inserting the PICC line which was awesome.  By the time I got there Friday afternoon they were in the middle of a trial run with the ventilator in standby mode.  They wanted to see how Ridge would do before they took him off the ventilator so they set the machine in standby mode where Ridge would do all the work, but it can kick back in if he starts struggling at all. After the trial, they checked the gas levels in his body to make sure he was tolerating breathing on his own. This took just a few minutes to get the results back.  His nurse came in and said he did great and they were going to take him off the ventilator.  I couldn't believe it! I thought it was still going to be a few days so it was definitely a good surprise.  They did say that some babies struggle after a few minutes and they end up having to put them back on the ventilator, but they just never know how the baby will react until they remove the ventilator.

After they took him off the ventilator, they put him on oxygen to help with the transition of him breathing on his own.  It was such a relief to slowly start seeing him hooked up to less and less things.  As you can tell from this picture, he still had a ways to go, but he was already less attached than he was just a few days before.

Holding him for the first time since before his surgery was awesome!  I can't wait to get him home so I can snuggle him anytime I want.

Getting off the ventilator was a huge step and Ridge was a rockstar! He had no issues and they were able to ween him off the oxygen fairly quickly too.  The next big hurdle was going to be getting him to eat.  We had heard this was often an issue for heart babies but we were hoping Ridge would catch on quickly. The following week, there weren't really too many updates.  Ridge was still recovering and they were slowly taking him off medications and increasing his feeds as he would tolerate it.  They started feeding him through the NG tube in his nose and started out with trophic feeds that were being constantly given.  Then they worked up to bolus feeds where he would get the whole feeding at one time. Ridge was doing great and tolerating everything well.  It was so nice to feel like we were moving in the right direction and getting closer to bringing him home.