Mommy

I've been playing around with our pictures and here's a mommy collage I made.

4 months

I can't believe Lincoln is 4 months old already! He's still such a little guy. We sat next to a family at church today with a 3 1/2 month old that TOWERED over Lincoln. We love Link!

Going bald?

Lincoln started loosing his baby hair. He's been loosing it in patches. Normally that wouldn't look so bad but Lincoln had a ton of hair so it was weird to see a lot of hair in one spot and no hair in another spot. So Russ and I buzzed it this morning. He looks really different but cute!

This is Link with hair

This is Link while he was going bald. He lost a lot in front but the back was still long.

This is Link with a buzz. He looks so different!!

I graduated again...kinda!!

I walked in the spring graduation for my Master's degree. I still have three classes left this summer until I am officially done but they don't have a summer graduation. So I have my Masters... kinda. I'll be done the beginning of July!

Update and Blessing

The surgery Friday went well and they even let us come home that night. Link was a ROCKSTAR and is doing great! One day I will scan in a line drawing of his heart and explain it in more detail but here's what we know now... the Dr. who performed his surgery said that the pulmonary valve looked great (he didn't need to re-balloon it) and the BT Shunt looked great (not clogged at all). He said the reason that Link's oxygen stats are so low is that the right side is still leaking out the wrong way and bypassing the lungs. The right side is sending some un-oxygenated blood throughout the body and not up the pulmonary valve to the lungs to get oxygenated (When I scan in the picture it will make more sense). His recommendation was to wait til he's older and keep him on oxygen (I don't know what 'older' means. He talked about this same thing with a child that was 10 months old so we'll see...) and then going in and coiling off the BT Shunt (which will need to be done at some point) and then closing off the area that is leaking unoxygenated blood. If that works and the right side handles it okay, Link would have a normal working heart just like you and me. They would have to open him up eventually and divide the shunt so it doesn't distort the heart. And he would still need valve replacements every so often (but the Dr. mentioned that they are starting to do that in the cath lab as well). And if it doesn't work then we can still do the Glenn surgery. We are meeting with our cardiologist in a couple weeks. We are hoping that we can talk her into trying the cath lab before doing the Glenn!!!

Sunday, we had Lincoln's baby blessing. Russell gave a beautiful blessing and we were able to spend the day with our family. It was so great to be with all our loved ones!

Heart Cath Surgery

Link goes in tomorrow morning for a heart cath. It's similar to the first surgery he had when he was two days old. They go through the artery in his leg, up to his heart. They are going to dye the blood to get a better look at the blood flow through his heart. They might possibly try to open his shunt up (because it's getting clogged with blood). What they see tomorrow will help us make a more definite "plan" of the next few months of his life. It will help us determine when we need the Glenn and hopefully determine how successful that will be. We might not get to meet with his cardiologist tomorrow so we might have to wait a few weeks to hear about the "plan". Link's surgery will be at 10:30 and he needs to stay for at least 24 hours afterwards. We are hoping for no complications or blood clots (like last time) and then we should be home by Saturday. Cross your fingers!!!

3 months old!

The day we came home from the hospital, Link turned THREE MONTHS OLD!Ever since we upped his Zantac and got him on Oxygen, he's been a completely different baby!! He SMILES and TALKS all the time! He's such a good little baby!

Link's LONG Dr's apt!!

Link went in for an apt. at Primary's to get an upper GI (for his acid reflux) at 2:00 Thursday... 22 hours later he was discharged from the CICU (cardiac Intensive Care Unit).

Russ took Link to his apt to get an upper GI so that the Dr.'s could prescribe something better for his acid reflux because the zantac wasn't working. Something was wrong with the machine so they couldn't do it for about a half hour so Russ decided he would go to Cardiac and get Link's Oxygen Stats checked. He statted at high 50's, low 60's (a normal baby or person like you or me should be statting in the 90's. They want Link to be statting between 75 and 85 so he was statting very low). So they strapped him up to oxygen, did an echo (ultrasound) on his heart, and said that he was staying the night. The ultrasound showed that his shunt was starting to clog up so he wasn't getting as much blood flow through the shunt. He did well with oxygen throughout the night and... we had been giving him the WRONG DOSE of Zantac so they upped the Zantac and he did MUCH better (HORRIBLE parents, I know, but it was really a tender mercy because if his tummy wasn't hurting so much we wouldn't have gone to Primary's and found out that his stats were so low and wouldn't have been able to get oxygen on him). They tried setting up an appointment with the Cath lab today (they would go INSIDE him with a catheter, dye the blood, etc. to get the BEST look at his heart) but the cath lab was full today so they sent us home (with oxygen).

The plan is to come back in a week or two and do the cath lab to get the best view of his heart and do a "Pre-Glenn" of his heart. Then the Dr. told us that we need to do the Glenn surgery sooner than later- probably when he is around 4 1/2 months old (in a month and a half).

He was such a trooper the entire time we were there.

Can't get enough

Even though he's a stinker sometimes, I can't get enough of this little guy.

Here's Link and his cousin, Macen, at Easter. Macen LOVED Lincoln but is definitely a little BIGGER!!

GREEN EYES?!
Link still has blue eyes but this picture that Russ took shows him with green...weird. I guess only time will tell!!

Rough Start

Poor Link! He's had such a crappy life! If living at Primary's and having heart surgeries the first month of life wasn't enough, the last month he's had horrible tummy issues- constipation, gas, and acid reflux! He'll scream when he eats because it hurts him and he's been pretty fussy because he's so uncomfortable. We've tried...

Primary Children's apt to make sure his heart was okay
Different bottles
Mylecon
Pediatrician appointment
Prune juice
Suppositories
Swing
Another Pediatrician appointment
Tummy X-ray
Zantac
pumping his legs
more suppositories
Keeping him upright after he eats
tilting his bed
herbal digestive remedy on his tummy
order for an upper GI x-ray

Finally, I've been taking him to this Chiropractor in Draper that's been treating him with holistic remedies (ie: "desensitizing" him to his milk, working on his feet, adjusting his back, using a cold lazer. etc.). It's the only thing that has really seemed to help. Now Link doesn't scream during ALL of his bottles and is only pretty fussy at night. He poops by himself and everything! He's still fussy and uncomfortable sometimes and I hate seeing him in pain but I'm glad he's doing a little better. For a while there he was going to be an only child... he might still be (at least for a LONG time)!!! Good thing he is SO DANG CUTE!!! Here's some of my favorite recent pictures!