Holding Owen 10:13am April 14th

They finally are letting us hold Owen.  This is the first time that we are getting to hold him since his has had the Norwood procedure last Thursday.  Nine whole days we weren't allowed to hold him, do you know how difficult that is especially when he is right there.  Of course Cassie stole the first shift with Owen.  I guess that is only fair because I gave him his first bottle.

Now the doctors are in the room for morning rounds.  They were talking about starting to ween Owen off of some of the IV meds.  Yesterday they started Owen on Clonidine orally for irritability and since he is handling that well, they are going to be taking him off of the Dexmedetomidine.  Today they are going to start him on Captopril orally and if that controls his blood pressure well, they will hopefully get him off of the Milrinone tomorrow.  They are also going to take off the patch for monitoring his blood oxygenation on his forehead.  They might even be pulling Owen's arterial line tomorrow.  For his feeds they want to increase his intake by 5ml every other feed with a goal of 45ml a feed so that they can get Owen off of IV fluids.  They are also planning on pulling Owen's pacer wires tomorrow because they haven't had to use them at all.  So, if all goes well, Owen might be totally IV free sometime tomorrow.  As far as starting to dress Owen, we have to defer to his nurse.  If his nurse is willing to help us dress him, we can get him into some of the cute outfits we brought for Owen.