Good start to the week!

Monday, April 18 didn't really change anything medically (in terms of the bladder/kidney issues) but for the parents and Blake today was a great day! "Blakers" got to get completely off of his oxygen support and got his arterial line out. What does that mean? FIRSTS!: He got to be held by his mom for the first time! He got to get a bath! He got to put on clothes! He also is trying to feed from a bottle, although he struggles a bit with it hopefully that will be something he can pick up fast over the next few days. Here are some pics from todays firsts!

First holding session for mom, she also got to try and bottle feed during this time. There is just one little problem, Blake has his days and nights mixed up. The nurses say he is up all night, when we are there during the day he sleeps the whole time. Hard to feed when he won't wake up!

First bath: "come on mom, I don't stink that bad. Let me go back to sleep!"

Yes, his first outfit is the same first outfit that Bowen got... because it is one of the only things we have that fits... also because it was the only thing we had in the diaper bag, we didn't know that he was going to have such a good day to get to the dressing point but we are happy that he did.

Tomorrow he will get the drain to his urinoma out which will be one less then attached to him. At some point this week he will get a catheter put in to start dialysis. Although today his creatinine number came down for the first time, we will still need to wait and see what that means. As for the catheter, they will put that in and then (unless emergent) we will wait about two weeks before dialysis actually starts. From there, we will be looking at another 2+ weeks (at the best) before he, and us, are ready for him to come home on dialysis. From that point in time we will be aiming to get to about 20 lbs before talking about kidney replacement. We found out that kidney replacement in infants is just one of maybe two or three transplants in their life. The good thing is that as an infant you go straight to the top of the list for replacement. In most cases, a infant kidney comes from an adult relative so that is something we will have to discuss in the future as well. Today's visitor was Shannon Reisinger who came with some great gifts of chocolate! (for both the parents and the older kids)

As much as we heard today medically, it is a day we remember for the firsts! It was a great day for all of us and hopefully this will lead to so many more!