Romeo spent 2 days in PICU, he recovered so well from his surgery. He was out of theatre at about 10pm and was extubated at 10am the next day, I couldn’t believe how quickly he was smashing the post surgery milestones.

It’s strange that first day after surgery you expect to see them hooked up to a ventilator in a coma like state. It’s so very different, they look like tiny drunk humans waving their arms and legs in the air whilst drugged up on sedatives. I took one video of Romeo like this, I wish I took more just to remember how it was.

The worst part is seeing them all puffy and swollen, they look like a different baby. I remember his voice sounding so hoarse where the ventilator had been and he let out a cry which just didn’t sound like him desperately trying to let a tear out of his swollen eye, it was heartbreaking. All you want to do is give them a big cuddle but with a chest drain, catheter, arterial line, central line, pacing wires, oxygen and heart rate monitors this was near on impossible. Holding him for the first time was scary but amazing at the same time, luckily we only had to wait 2 days to hold him again. I didn’t want to put him back down, I felt complete again.

He moved up to HDU from PICU and spent another couple of days here, he had a couple of hiccups on the way and just needed a little bit extra help to breathe to give him a bit of a break but other than that he did amazing, they are incredible little humans these cardiac babies. They really do bounce back after such a traumatic experience.

Day by day more drugs get weaned and more wires and tubes get removed. The withdrawals from the morphine are tough but it’s so worth it in the end, our end goal was to be wire free so we could take Romeo to see the fish on the ward and 6 days post op he was finally ready! 🐠

After 11 days we were finally discharged from Hospital, it was the best feeling just knowing we could take our baby home and spend some quality time together as a family. Just having Romeo back in his own bed asleep next to me was priceless and what I had been longing for so much after a gruelling 6 weeks.