Sternal Closure

Today, two days after his Norwood, Wyatt's sternum was closed. They turned his PICU room into an OR, and just had us leave while they did the operation. The intensivist on duty today was pretty leery about letting them close, mainly because of the upper chest edema Wyatt is still having, but his surgeon talked the intensivist into it. Wyatt tolerated the closure extremely well. They said his heart rate and blood pressure didn't even change during the operation. His vitals have been more steady since they closed. He had a lot of packing in his chest from trying to stop the bleeding in the OR, and that packing may have been blocking an artery, but after closure, they were able to turn his oxygen down to 40% and it had been at 60% prior to closure.

The plan for now is just to wait. They have stopped weaning him off his meds for a day, and are just letting him sit. We are watching his urine output, his drainage, and his bilirubin levels. Post closure his heart rate has dropped considerably, he was in the 190's last night, and is in the 150's now, which is near or at the normal heart rate for an infant.

Our next hurdles will be weaning him off his supportive meds, and getting him to breathe on his own. Today's intensivist said he is thinking possibly Monday for extubation, which is earlier than I had expected, but would be wonderful! We also need to get him to eat after extubation, which we anticipate could take weeks. Wyatt has never eaten by mouth, so we will have to teach him how to eat. I dont imagine I will be able to breast feed him, but I've been pumping him a nice stock pile of milk for bottle feeding. The good news is that he took to his binkie before surgery, so we are hoping he will have gotten some practice on his suck/swallow reflex from that.

In all, today has been a really good day. After the day we had during and after surgery, we so needed a good day like this. My fingers are tightly crossed that the days will continue to be successful.

Tomorrow afternoon I am finally going to go home to be with Austyn. It will have been 9 days since I've been home with him, or even at all, and I am really excited to be with my big guy. I am scared to be away from Wyatt, but can find peace in the fact that his Daddy will be here with him. I'm hoping for a smooth, calm evening here in the PICU so both Wyatt and I can get some peaceful rest.