First Month at Home!

I know it has been quite a while since I made a blog update! I can't believe we have been home for a month this week...

Mallory is doing wonderful! We are settling into our life at home and there isn't much that is different than a normal healthy baby...

We had our doctor's appointment last week and Mallory really is doing well. Her ejection fraction has improved from 17% to 30% which is great news. Dr. Mahle said once we get to 40+ we can actually consider her our of heart failure. Slowly but surely I am very hopeful that we will get there. We go back to the heart clinic in 2 weeks.

She is gaining weight and is in the 50th percentile of all babies her age! Considering we spent 6 weeks in the ICU and 4 of those she was not taking any formula, I am so happy!

Developmentally Mallory is also doing well. She is holding her head up pretty good, smiling and babbling like crazy. We have a hard time with tummy time because of her tube and reflux. There are other ways we can do the same exercise to try and strengthen her neck which we work on as much as we can. Her neck is also pretty stiff from ECMO but again it is getting much better. Her little fingers have also completely healed! She may never have fingerprints on them... But oh well!!

We took Mallory up to the lake last week for a mini vacation which we all desperately needed. Having my parents help was so nice to allow me to actually relax and get some sun! She went out on the boat at night and even saw her first fireworks show (from a distance of course!)

Madison is an unbelievable big sister. She loves Mallory so much and is so gentle with her, although the way she bosses us around and tells us how to take care of her, I think she thinks she is the Mom!

I have gone back to work, part time from home and it has been so nice to get back to work and back to some level of normalcy. I have missed my crazy job and my coworkers a ton!

We have decided to build a new house! I know..we are crazy, but prior to Mallory becoming so sick, we had a contract on our house and had just made an offer to build a new home. Although we did back out on the contract on our house, we decided that moving into a bigger house with more space was still the best move for our family. It has been so much fun the past 2 weeks watching the progress and picking out all of our design selections. The house will not be ready until mid to late October, but that is actually perfect for us and gives us plenty of time to prepare for moving.

All in all life's so great. There are days that I feel blessed in a way to have gone through all of this. Our family is so strong and our support system is unbelievable. We still pray daily for a complete recovery for Mallory and we know we still have a long journey ahead of us. But, we are growing, improving and most importantly we are all together and I thank God for that everyday.

Love to all,

Jess