This morning, the doctors met again to go over the plan for him. So far the schedule is to hang out in the CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) for a few days until he can get in to surgery to repair his heart. Yesterday there was a big meeting where the cardiologists all met to discuss his case and decide on how they felt it would be best to move forward. The Cardiologists then met with the surgical team, so they could make a plan on what they would like to do. The tentative plan is to get him into surgery sometime next week, hopefully on Wednesday September 19th.

early this afternoon, to make Judah a little more comfortable, the doctors removed one of the IV lines going into his umbilical cord, and instead put in a PICC line, which is an IV that goes into his arm and goes all the way through and sits in a vein near his heart. this will be the easiest way to monitor him and get blood.

the other big update for today is that with the PICC line in, he is able to eat regular breastmilk again. mommy has been saving all of his milk so that when he was ready, he’d have a steady stockpile. He got his first feeding of milk from a bottle, and even got to feed directly from mommy after receiving iv fluids for the last day and a half. He was very happy to receive it, and chugged down his entire dinner in just a few minutes. Gramma Luba even got to give him his first bottle feeding and she couldn’t have been happier to do it. She held him for over an hour, and he loved every second of it.

Today Judah had a lot of visitors, he got to see both mommy and daddy, aunt Rachel, and Gramma Sandy as well as Gramma Luba and Grampa Mark. everyone ooh’d and ahh’d and took lots of pictures of him. He even got to wear several different hats, and his first cute outfit, a onesie from one of mommy’s coworkers that says “Party in my crib, BYOB” with a little picture of a bottle on it.

Tonight he will get to spend the night hanging out with Daddy, who even let him stay up late so he could continue charming all of his nurses. Everyone loves his cute clothes, and his even cuter face. He will keep eating about every 3 hours, and the nurses have been fighting over who gets to feed him and hold him and take care of them. Daddy might even let one of them feed him at 3am so he can sleep a little, but he was there to feed him at midnight and is already looking forward to holding him and feeding him again at 6am.

Tomorrow morning they will remove the other line going into his umbilical cord and he will basically be untethered and mommy and daddy will be able to pick him up and carry him around. He will also get to meet and charm even more nurses and doctors. Judah is being very strong, and thanks you all for your thoughts and prayers.