Yesterday, Blake had a swallow test to see if he was aspirating when feeding from a bottle. The test confirmed that he had some slight aspiration. When we met with the team of surgeons, cardiologists, and therapists today to discuss next steps, they recommended inserting a gastric tube (G-Tube) into his stomach to assist with feeding. There are many reasons for this: safer than a nasogastric tube (NG-Tube) (which is his primary source of food now), allows nourishment since he is still very little and needs to gain some weight, and it will allow us to continue working on the bottle feedings safely with an occupational therapist while putting food directly into his belly via the tube.
After the surgery it will be several days to recover we are told and then we will likely be released to go home at the end of next week. The team of doctors are very conservative when it comes to releasing babies that have had HLHS surgery (Norwood procedure) especially if they are out-of-towners. They are thrilled with how quickly Blake has recovered from the actual heart surgery, but we just need to get through another obstacle before they are confident with letting us go home. We are trying to get the surgery scheduled for Monday so we can potentially be released at the end of next week. We will be meeting with the surgeon tomorrow to get the specifics and decide when it can be done.
This is obviously very disappointing to us as we had heard we were making such remarkable progress, it really felt like a huge blow out of nowhere. What is most important to us now is getting our family back together in one place in the healthiest, quickest way possible; we believe this feeding tube will allow us to do just that instead of spending the next month (or more) in the hospital working on safely taking 100% of feedings from a bottle.
The good part of today was that we got to introduce Blake to his big sister, Mason. She was so happy to finally get to see her little brother she has only seen pictures of. She immediately recognized him, called him by name, and ran over to give him a hug. She was very sweet and wanted Blake (pronounced by Mason as Bic-e) to see all of her books and play with her bunny.
Once again, we ask that all of you keep Blake in your thoughts and prayers.
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Life is a constant journey of hills and valleys. Blake made it to the top of the hill after surgery, and he will be there again soon after this surgery. Like I said earlier he's small but mighty like Mighty Mouse. Mason does love her Bic-e and it was wonderful to see the whole family together! All of you are constantly in our as well as in others prayers. We are Galligans and we are fighters and determined people. Love to all of you!
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