Out of surgery

It has been seven hours since we sent our baby girl to get her little heart fixed. We were just taken back to see her for the first time. She has tubes coming out of everywhere.

She is hooked up to at least ten machines. Finally, one of those machines doesn't include the prostaglandin drug. We are so happy to have her off of it. I was finally able to rub her little arms and legs, even though she has no idea we are there, it made me feel better. She is intubated right now and will be for the next two days. Her incision is about five inches long. Fortunately, the doctor was able to close her it before he brought her to back to recover. Typically when they have to use the bypass machine the babies become swollen making it hard for them to close the incision site immediately. She only needed to be on the machine for 20 minutes. The surgeon was pleased with that. I hard a real hard time being told that they would be going through her chest. This wasn't part of the plan. Finally Jeff helped me to realize that in one of her blessings she was told that the doctors would "be wise in their decisions." We had to trust him. Had he gone through her side, she would have ended up being cut down her chest as well because she needed to be put on the by pass machine. I am grateful for a husband that honors the priesthood and has faith in it and the Lord. She has a tube that is draining out of chest and the nurse is very happy with what that is doing. She is doing very well with the shunt. The surgeon gave us what was left over of it. It is a small, soft and flexible tube, made of gortex. It is hard to believe that this little tube is what's keeping our baby alive.

Everything about her looks great. Right now she is already trying to breath on her own. She is definitely a fighter! They have moved us into another room by our selves. She will stay in this room for 3-5 days and I'm having a hard time believing it, but the nurse thinks it will only be another 3-4 days after that until we are taking her home. Hopefully she will be coming off of some of these machines later this evening.