4 Weeks Old

On Thursday, Asher turned four weeks old.  In some ways, I can’t believe he is already four weeks, but in most ways, it seems like so long ago before he was born, for as Landon told me the other day, “Nothing has been the same since.”  We had an appointment with the cardiologist on Thursday, and everything is looking great for Asher.  They did an echocardiogram, and his heart function is great.  His sano conduit still has a “bend” in it, as the doctor said, which is making the blood flow to the lungs not as good as he would like, but he said Asher seems to be doing well with it, so as he indicated before, his Glenn surgery will be close to when he is three months instead of four or five months, so probably in June or July.  He said we won’t really know too far in advance, just that his oxygen numbers will start trending lower, and then we’ll look to schedule it the next week or so. 

At the appointment, Dr. King, his cardiologist, also told us that he no longer needed to take his lasix or his digoxin medicine, so all he has left is half of a children’s aspirin once a day.  The best news of all was that he can now go back on breast milk!  I was so excited to be done with that prescription formula, and so was Asher.  He has gobbled down his bottles of breast milk since then.  I have tried breast feeding him a little bit with a nipple shield, and he has done okay, so we’ll keep working at it to see if he can transition over.  If not, I am just glad he can be back on the breast milk.  His stomach also seems to be doing better, and he hasn’t thrown up at all since going to the breast milk.  He still spits up a bit more than our other boys, but nothing like before, at least so far.  

Besides that, we have survived our first week without my mom here to help.  The boys have done well, and except for a few mishaps (see Monday’s post for an example).  Landon did express some sadness yesterday, crying a bit about how things have changed with Asher, that we can’t have friends over, go to the park and other places as often, and that James is always bugging him.  :)  I promised them we’d go to a fun park together, so on Thursday we went to one by his school we hadn’t been to in awhile.  The boys had a lot of fun, and it was good for me too.  We bundled up Asher in this cute warm outfit, and he stayed nice and cozy while the boys played.

   

Landon took these pictures of me holding Asher on the swing:

            

The beautiful blossom tree by the park – lots of trees have already gone to leaf, but there are a few gorgeous ones left in blossoms:

 

We are still loving having Asher around.  Davis is probably the most interested in him, frequently walking by him and giving him kisses, or just talking to him.  I caught these few pictures of him the other night when everyone else was gone at Landon’s baseball game.

 

We also finished up Landon’s science project, and he took his project to the science fair on Thursday.  The fourth and fifth graders are required to do a project, while the other grades can do it if they want to.  Landon really wanted to do a project this year, and it turned out pretty good.  I think it was a good experience for him.  I typed up the headlines for him, but he rewrote all of his notes and the directions in his best handwriting for his display board.