One Week Old

Silje turned one week old this morning at 1:24am. Yep, one whole entire week! Seven whole days.

She's had a lot going on in her short little life. She's had tape on her face almost her entire life. It doesn't seem fair.

Her heart and everything associated with the surgery continue to make good progress. She continues to have some small seizures in her right arm, though the medicine seems to be helping. Once the medicine for that gets balanced out and dependable, then the breathing tube can come out and we can think about her being transferred back over to the NICU.

A couple of lines have come out today. The ones in her belly button are out. The one giving her heart-strengthening medicine is out. Her catheter is out. So, there are definitely fewer things poking her. Though, they did add a feeding tube (through her cute little nose), so there is one more thing poking her. The feeding tube means that she can start to get mother's milk. Jeni has been pumping and the nursing staff have been freezing it away getting ready for her to have it. They will start with the earliest milk and move up to the most recent milk. There should still be milk on tap, so to speak, by the time she's ready to start nursing.

As to the seizures: they aren't big. They are very localized. They caught one on the EEG they did yesterday and the neurologist said it was very localized. He said he couldn't tell what is causing it until they can do a CT scan or, better yet, an MRI. In the night they did a CT scan, but there wasn't anything conclusive on that. So, very mysterious. They really need to do an MRI to try to find something more conclusive. But, since the MRI is a big magnet, and she has wires going into her heart, the MRI will have to wait.

The heart surgeon pointed out, though, that it doesn't really matter at this point what an MRI might point to, the treatment would be the same as what she is getting. So, no matter what is causing the seizures, the treatment would be the same. So, I guess we can wait a number of days for the MRI.

We'll let her little body rest and recover from big surgery. We'll let her get stabilized on her meds. We'll get to the point of removing the breathing tube, then the point of removing the pace maker. Then we'll go from there.

Things really are going well, it's just a lot of waiting. ... and a long time to have tape on your face.