its hard to believe that Maddie is only 6 days old today...

Thank you to everyone for all of your love, support and concern. I'm sorry we haven't been able to respond to all of your e-mails and phone calls - we've been a bit overwhelmed lately. Luckily, we've been blessed with a lot of help from Dan's parents, my mom & my grandmother. I'm not sure how we would have gotten through this without them. Elliott has been doing well - oblivious to what is going on, he is in heaven having many of his favorite people around. We've spent most of our time at the hospital to be with Maddie and talk with the doctors. Elliott is being spoiled in Champaign by his Grandma & Grandpa Weix and they have been frequently coming to Peoria to provide us with some comic relief and diversion.

Maddie had her heart surgery today and it went well, though it took a little longer than expected which was a bit nerve racking. Her little heart and arteries are all working the right way now and slowly the doctors will begin taking all the tubes away and we'll just have to see how well she does on her own. Recovery can take anywhere from a week to several months - its all up to Maddie now.

Prior to today's surgery, we had spent the past five days just waiting. The doctors like to wait until babies are at least a week old before operating on them to give them a chance to get used to life outside the womb. Maddie did really well during this time, but liked to keep the nurses on their toes. Many of the nurses became scared of her and we frequently heard comments like, "I want to check her temperature, but I'll wait to change her diaper so I don't angry her up too much." You can't really blame her though, getting a thermometer shoved up your bum is not the most pleasant thing in the world. Sometimes when they would change her diaper or check her temperature, she'd get so mad that she would reverse the flow of blood going through her heart. "Uh oh, she's shunting," the nurse would say as we watched her oxygen level crater on the monitor. The doctors have assured me that it should all be fixed now so when she does throw temper tantrums, they shouldn't cause her to pass out.

Maddie also liked to keep the nurses on their toes by having short episodes of apnea where she would just stop breathing. Newborns are known to do this from time to time, but it is a common side effect of the prostaglandins that were keeping her alive. About mid-week, they started giving her a little bit of caffeine in the mornings to help reduce these episodes and it seemed to work pretty well. I have a feeling that one of her meds when she comes home will involve a shot of espresso every morning. I imagine our morning routine will go something like, Elliott wakes us all up bright and early and we all go downstairs to watch him run around and do his thing while Maddie, Dan & I settle in for our morning coffee.

Once again, thank you all for your love, support, prayers, e-mails, and phone calls. Hopefully the worst is behind us now. We'll post pictures as soon as we can.