Last night was a little rough in terms of pain control. Originally, Lincoln was going to get an epidural since this was such a big surgery, but his clotting labs didn’t look good enough for that. There was lots of tossing and turning and low oxygen from being so agitated overnight. 

While we were extubated, his constant desaturations from holding his breath made the team put him on high flow, so he was still being forced to get some oxygen even when he was angry. He basically wasn’t wearing it all once he did get relatively comfortable, so the goal is to come off that pretty quick today. 

We think his pain is pretty under control and now he’s just really needing some loving. He’s use to being a Velcro baby at the hospital, so staying in a crib by himself while people work around him is probably terrifying. Right now we are getting morphine and Tylenol and then some anxiety medicine. 

Liver labs look SO GOOD! For once we aren’t here for a liver-related issue (yay?). This surgery was so big, but the cardiothoracic surgeon was very confident he did everything that was needed. The hole was large, which is good for his intestines because they weren’t being suffocated in his chest cavity, but it wasn’t too big that the surgeon couldn’t just suture the diaphragm. 

Suturing the diaphragm allows it to still move up and down freely as Lincoln breathes. A mesh patch would have made it a little stiffer. The surgeon said he made sure to make this stitch pretty tight so this shouldn’t happen again, but of course we can’t be 100% sure. The hole was closer to the center of his diaphragm too, which the surgeon said is the most ideal. 

While the intestines were moving freely, Lincoln’s right lung was pretty smooshed and difficult to reposition during surgery. There are no concerns about it, but he does have a chest tube since it’s leaking a little. This morning the surgeon liked his x-ray so he manipulated the settings of that and we’ll get another x-ray to see how he tolerated that change. 

So far, we’ve had 8oz of milk, 4oz of puree, and 2.5oz of water! Belly looks a little distended so we’re getting an x-ray, but no vomiting, so we’re happy. We stopped maintenance fluids, working on coming off anxiety medication, working on coming off oxygen, and hopefully we get to hold our little boy today ❤️