Matthew is 2 weeks old today and he decided to celebrate in style. The ventilator has been out for about 9 hours now and he's still going strong. He appears to have the energy to continue breathing on his own. Coming off the ventilator also means he will be sedated less and will be awake more. He was awake for a solid hour this evening and was very interested in everything his Mom had to say. We were able to interact with him more in that one hour than we have in the past 9 days combined.
But, Matthew's congenital heart disease will keep us humble ...around 5:00 tonight Matthew had to have a pacemaker attached to his heart. This is a relatively common event and thankfully they had left the electrodes attached to his heart from surgery so all they had to do was plug it in. He's a pretty relaxed boy from a heart rate stand point and they don't like babies in the PICU to drop below 110 beats per minute. There have been a few times over the past few days that Matthew's heart rate has dropped to the mid 90's. When it happened again this afternoon they decided it was time to connect a pacemaker to ensure he stays at or above 110 beats. This shouldn't be too much of an issue. Hopefully he will be able to come off the pacemaker before he comes home.
This wasn't a bad day though...this is definitely a day we are celebrating.
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