Today was a long day for both Baby J, and mommy. The doctors woke both of them up at 7am to do the procedure he was supposed to have late last week. After not eating for several hours, the doctors took little J down to the operating room to perform a panendoscopy, which is a procedure used to examine the esophagus and stomach. The doctors determined that everything looks very normal in his esophagus, although his throat is still a bit swollen and irritated from all the breathing tubes being put in and taken out, twice. Only time will heal it, but it is normal and expected given everything Judah has been through. Thursday he will go through another “cookie swallow” test, which is what he did early last week where the doctors give him a Barium solution to drink and watch via an x-ray how it goes into his stomach to see if anything is still going into his lungs. This is the next step in finding out about Judah’s eating issues, and will give us an estimate on how much longer we will need to feed through the tube.

Judah was a bit cranky today, due to the increased irritation in his throat from the procedure this morning, as well as from being taken down on his methodone, a drug he was on to help him get off of the sedatives from post surgery. At this point he is down to just once a day and doing very well on this reduced rate, and soon he will be off of it completely and no longer on any major drugs, aside from the heart medications he is on temporarily for preventative measures.

It was a long day for mommy, who didn’t sleep so much last night, but lack of sleep is pretty much par for the course when you have a 4 week old baby. Speaking of which, today was Judah’s 4 week birthday. Since his next procedure isn’t until Thursday, he will get to spend the next 2 days resting and relaxing, and we hope mommy can do the same. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of you, and to baby J for a nice and calm day of continued recovery.