Visit with Dad

I spent some time at the hospital tonight with Emma, and had a good chat with her nurse and one of the residents. Overall, Emma's doing well, and they're about to start feeding her every three hours. Unfortunately the on-again off-again heart murmur is on again, and I learned that my previous post was somewhat incorrect. Her major problem is PDA, PFO is secondary. In short, there's a small blood vessel that connects the aorta to the pulmonary artery. Before the baby is born the lungs aren't used, and some of the output from right ventrical is fed back into the aorta. In a large number of premature babies, including Emma, the vessel remains open. They're going to try a third round of medication to close it, and if that fails she'll require surgery. Fortunately the surgery is relatively straight forward, and involves simply tying off the blood vessel responsible. The staff at the NICU also started bringing me up to speed on many of the other challenges that Emma will face and they lent me a good book on the subject. So on one hand I know she's doing well, but I'm also being warned that we have a rollercoaster ride ahead.