Praise the Lord we are HOME!

So this past Friday, July 23rd, 2010, exactly six weeks from our second flight to Children's Hospital Karter was released! Karter did have to come home on oxygen, breathing treatments, and lots of medications. I had to take a little quiz over all of the medications to make sure I knew what they were for, how to give them, when to give them, and how much. They also trained me on her oxygen tanks and on how to do her breathing treatments. Karter's lungs are still not fully healed but they were good enough for the doctors to go ahead and send her back home! The reason her lungs are having such a hard time healing is due to a small leak in the pulmonary valve. The leak is still trivial so it is not of much concern besides the fact that it is putting out a little too much fluid. This type of leak happened due to the complexity of her operation. It will be corrected at a later date, hopefully not until she needs her second surgery to replace her conduit. By the way I do not know if I have ever shared that Karter's conduit is actually a piece of a cow vein. This has lead to many debates between Jeremy and I on how it might be a little weird for her to eat red cow meat! :) Anyways they hope to have her off of her oxygen in 6 to 8 weeks, long enough to build back up her lungs so that they may shed that extra fluid from her leaky valve.

Karter is on a variety of medications in which she takes extremely well! The only one that she struggles with every now and then is her Tylenol which is not one that is very important unless she is in pain. The rest of them she takes like a champ!

Upon knowing our release date Jeremy came up to Dallas Thursday night so that he could help me lug back all of our belongings. Actually majority of it was stuff for Karter! It took us two cars to get her back to town! But hey what could you expect from a princess who just spent 6 weeks away from home? The nurses were very sad to see Karter go! They loved sneaking in to hold her and even kicking me out so that they could feed her and hold her. It was a bitter sweet day leaving the hospital. We meet so many incredible people while at Children's!

So when we were able to leave and head home we did not tell Addison. We all thought it best she did not know in case that we were not able to come back when we thought. We went straight over to her Nana & Pa's that Friday evening and as soon as I walked through the door with her "baby Karter" she burst into the biggest smile I have ever seen. She was elated to have her mommy home. Unfortunately it took a little while for her to realize that the baby I was carrying was indeed her sister. It has been almost 3 full weeks since she last saw her and since then Karter has done a lot of growing! Once she figured it out though she was instantly latched to her sister!

This weekend we spent doing a variety of things. Addison and I had a baby shower for our dear friend Heather that we went to help host. It turned out better than I could have ever hoped for leaving soon to be baby Cohen very spoiled! Then we came back home & cleaned the house from top to bottom so that Karter could have the most sterile environment we could create. Sunday we spent at the house doing absolutely nothing! It was perfect, to have my family all back under the same roof with no constraints, other than lugging around Karter's oxygen tube! I could not have asked for a better weekend! Today we started Karter's new regiment of doctor visits. Addison, Karter, the Tank, and I braved it out amongst the real world and went to their pediatrician. Karter received a clean bill of health, and other than Addison telling the doctor to leave her baby alone we had not complications. It was exciting to go to the doctor for once to get good news. I defiantly could get use to this! This week we will be attending Karter's PT and OT sessions, a cardiologist visit, and then a visit to get her shots! I would much rather be at home though and have to go to doctors appointments over living in the hospital!

I can not wait to share Karter's continued improvements with you! One of the most special things this week was Karter's first real bath! Due to her being able to spell if we got her too upset we were limiting Karter to little baths using a sponge and a little bucket up until we went to Dallas. While in Dallas we had to continue this regiment because of all of her monitors. However, all of that changed this past Sunday night when we were able to pull out Karter's little bath holder and try a "real" bath! Even if she got real upset it did not matter anymore because she would still be able to receive ox gen throughout her body! We sat her down in the tub with Addison and she LOVED it! Both of the girls were smiling and having a great time. Addi just loved being able to help wash her little sister. We did have to stop her from pouring water all over Karter's head but other than that she did fantastic! It was nice to be able to share Karter's first bath with Addi Grace.

We look forward to a great week full of stories to tell the world! We can not thank anyone enough for all of the prayers that went up for our precious baby girl. God does answer prayers and miracles do happen! With out your prayers and our Lord there is no telling where we would be today. Our faith created our strength for this whole ordeal. God is always good!

Praise the Lord we are HOME!

Love,

Tara McHam