Barrett is 1 month old!

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:13

The hours have turned to days, and the days to weeks; suddenly our son is a month old! It's been an enormous joy and comfort chronicling and sharing Barrett's journey here. We're abundantly blessed to have such incredible family members, friends, and church community behind us through the whole experience.

If I've learned one thing about ICUs in my month here, it's that "Boring = Good." It's been arguably our first "boring" week and for good reason - Barrett's condition is very stable, he's feeding regularly, being weaned off the majority of his medications, and is slowly being disconnected from more equipment each day. Though I'm certain we'll have plenty more ups and downs over the first few years of Barrett's life, he has certainly earned this last week's worth of calm and peace.

We've also gotten to hold Barrett as often as possible this week, and started him on "drip feeds" - dripping breast milk onto a pacifier to simulate breastfeeding. Delayed or absent breastfeeding ability is an unfortunate reality for many HLHS babies and the sooner these therapies are introduced, the better the outcomes. We're optimistic that he'll be able to manage traditional feeding in some capacity at home - but if not, he'll continue to use an NG feeding tube until he weans off breast milk entirely in favor of solid foods.

We've been informed that we're only a few days away from "step-down", the next phase of Barrett's recovery here in the ICU. Step-down is a space for more stable patients who are preparing for discharge and therefore need less frequent and immediate care. Though the course of antibiotics Barrett is receiving (mentioned in the Week #4 Update) will likely keep us here a bit longer, we'll use this time to work Barrett toward bottle-feeding and hopefully breastfeeding when we finally take him home.