Quiet Time

As Evie has improved and stabalized, the nurses have given us the opportunity to hold Evie for a little while each day. I'm sitting across from Nicole and Evie resting together in a lazyboy--it is a beautiful sight. The baby is still doing well, but a few small problems these last 12 hours. Evie struggled a little bit with her breathing last night, so she's back on a small flow of oxygen. Similarly her blood oxygen levels are slightly lower as well, not dangerous, but lower. Additionally, Evie has mostly come off the sedation medication and is now both more alert and also a little more fussy. Its not a terrible thing, but it does remind us that she is in an unnatural and uncomfortable state. It will be nice when this is all behind us.

I was asked about how exactly this all happened after we had been discharged from Swedish Covenant Hospital with a clean bill of health. As I understand it, when babies are in utero we have an extra little blood vessel that does some of the circulating of the blood between the two chambers of the heart. About 24-48 hours after birth, this vessel naturally closes. So when Evie was born, her heart was functioning normal as it has done for the past nine months. There were no murmurs for the doctors to defect until after this vessel closes. So it was only on Sunday after we got home that the defect in her heart started to make itself known. This is how Evie appeared so normal and healthy when she was born and yet now has such a serious condition. Allegedly, this is one of the more common types of heart defects in infants.

...wow. As I type Evangeline is opening her eyes quite a bit. I'm gonna wrap this up so she can take in her dad's mug. Hopefully that won't do any serious damage to her ;)