We made it!

Whew! The giant hurdle of surgery is behind us! We got up nice and early and got Sam checked in this morning. We prayed for our little baby girl and left the hotel at 5:30. We sat in the pre-surgery room with her for an hour and a half while we waited for them to get things ready. Daddy was getting all kinds of smiles from her with his stories as you can see in the pics. About 7:20 we kissed her cheeks and said goodbye so they could start her anesthesia. That was a hard goodbye but we managed.

Overall she was away from our sites for about 5 hours. The surgery took about 3 1/2 and the rest was prepartion and recovery. Since she had open heart surgery, they had to put her on the bypass machine. Basically they cool  her heart down and redirect blood flow through the machine rather than going through the heart. And in that her heart is no longer beating-scary! The nurse came out a couple times to update us while we waited so that kept us at ease. Then the surgeon came out when he had her closed up. He let us know that her ventricular defect was acutally an AV canal defect which is worse. Basically where the four chambers come together, there was a giant hole. The atrial defect was small enough to put a couple stitches in. They had to put a patch over the large hole-it is made out of gortex. Yesterday  he had explained that her high pulmonary pressures would need further treatment during surgery. HOWEVER....as soon as the defect was repaired, her pressures dropped by half and they didn't have to give her any of the other blood pressure therapies. Praise the Lord for that answered prayer. The fact that the defect was larger that originally anticipated thankfully doesn't change the outcome for an excellent long term prognosis. She sailed through the whole procedure exceptionally well and better than they expected. Again to God be the glory!

Right now we are in ICU with her. I could hardly wait to see her even though I knew it would be hard to see her like that. Once again I was so thrilled with how she looked. She has great color and even though she has lots of tubes and wires, she looks so much better than what I was expecting. She still has not fully woken up but is in the process. Originally they said she would have to keep the breathing tube in until tomorrow, but she is doing so well and breathing against the ventilator they will most likely pull it tonight! She has her mom's strong will which in this situation is a huge blessing! Now the next smaller hurdle is the next 24 hours. Once we get past that, the chance of set backs is very small. So now we are just thanking God for how well she is doing and asking for that to continue. We both have so much peace about everything. Thankyou Jesus for watching over us from the tiny details to the big picture.