And Wait...

Well,
I am sorry I did not update as the days went by.  But if you can imagine, life was pretty crazy the past week or so.
Going back 5 days to the day of the surgery, we had a pager, and waiting for phone calls while the Drs were literally having my sons heart in their hands.  They called several times:
- When they got all the IV's in
- When they made the first incision
- Got him connected to the bypass machine
- When the repair was complete
- When the surgery was finished

Dr Eckhauser told us not to expect him till about 2:30-3pm, so when we got the call at 12:45pm that the surgery was complete and they were taking him to the CICU (Cardiac ICU) we were shocked.  The surgery was much faster than anticipated, that had to be good right?

About 1:30pm Dr Eckhauser came out and told us how the surgery went.  He said the surgery went great.  He used a tightly woven plastic and gortex patch to close up the big hole in the bottom of the heart.  Then he stitched up the hole in the top part of the heart, and while in there he said he found a 2nd hole in the upper chamber and closed that too.  He also put a stitch in his PDA valve that was still open.  Then he found the center of his heart and made a septum by basically sewing his heart in half.. I guess, I am no surgeon or cardiologist, but thats how I understand what he told us.  But he said everything went great.

Next we were taken back to see our sweet son.  I was shaking.  I knew he was going to be hooked to a whole bunch of wires and tubes, but I wasn't prepared to see my son that way.

He had a tube down his throat and he was on all kinds of IV's and medicine to keep him sedated and calm.  I had to stay outside the room and peek around the curtain.  I was terrified.  I broke down, how can you handle seeing your baby like this?  He was still coming off all of the anestithia and it was a terrifying sight.  He was still asleep but all of his muscles were firing and he was shaking his arms and legs and jolting his body around.  It was the scariest thing I have every seen.  That made it so hard to actually go into the room and see him.  That was probably the hardest part about the entire day.  Handing him off I knew he was in good hands and was going to be fixed so he could breathe better.  Here seeing his body with a rise and fall of the chest, but otherwise lifeless jolting and thrashing and he had no control over it.  But I think it hurt me more than it hurt him.
Thank goodness for Andrew, he was my rock.  He was there by his side for the first couple of days.  I couldn't stomach it.  I tried holding him after they took his vent tube out and he was choking on the mucus that was stuck in his throat and I was freaking out and I saw his eyes get big and he started to freak out too.  It was better for the both of us if I didn't hold him till he wasn't so fragile.  I do not do well with needles or pain, so to see my baby like this just about killed me.  I wasn't able to nurse him for about 3 days till they took his chest tube out.  I tried and he was so uncomfortable and was thrashing and wiggling because he was in pain. So I decided to let him heal and I would just become better friends with a pump.  yay..

I am so glad that the surgery went well and that he is breathing!  Now to make sure he comes off the anesthesia and pray he didn't have a stroke while sedated.