A Boy of Surprises

Today was spent in the doctor's office. For 3 and a half hours. To be fair, I was a few minutes late thanks to traffic and poorly marked roads, but that's another story, and yall visit here to read about Joey and not about my inability to handle online map mistakes with grace and poise. Moving on.

Joey continues to keep us on our toes. Right about the time we start thinking we know what to expect he surprises us with a change. Today's, thankfully, was nothing significant.

The pressure across his pulmonary artery (PA) band was stable. Which is good news in that surgery is in the near future, but is not urgent. He is growing and his heart is working well and he will need that band taken off and that hole closed soon. But not right now. No, instead what changed over the past 3 weeks is the pressure across his aortic valve. His stenosis has progressed to the magic number at which he earns another trip to the cardiac catheterization lab. He will undergo his next balloon valvoplasty to loosen and stretch his aortic valve sometime in the next 2 weeks. (ish.) We will know the schedule sometime within the next week, and I will update as soon as possible asking for more prayers!
In simpler news, he is growing nicely! Mr. Chubby Cheeks is up to 10 lbs, 6.5 ozs! He is alert and very smiley, loves watching his sisters and is a big fan of snuggling on my chest. I am meeting with another lactation consultant to try to encourage his to latch as he seems to have given up nursing in favor of the bottle. Any nursing mama will verify how heart-wrenching that is! We have another follow-up swallow study coming up soon, which I am confident will show that his vocal fold has healed and he's ready to eat regular thinned liquids.