A few weeks of thought...

Today we saw Max again and it was one of the days we had to inevitably expect. None of the news was outright horrible. Some of it, however, was less than what I’d consider good. His white blood cell count is higher than they’d like to see. Often, this is due to an infection. They won’t know for sure until they get back the blood cultures they’ve started as of this morning. The other news is that his murmur is still present. This is not unusual, but it could still potentially mean that surgery is necessary. I honestly worry about this surgery. Not because I don’t trust that the doctors will do the greatest job possible, but because I don’t like the idea of little Maximilian going through so much stress so early in his life. His lungs still aren’t doing as well as we’d like (again, all normal for his stage), but they’re hoping that once his heart issue is resolved, so will his breathing issues. The surgery itself means a bit of a delay on his total recovery time regarding his breathing and everything else. They had him up to 2.5ml of EBM (expressed breast milk) today and he hasn’t brought it back up. This is awesome, because then it means that he’ll take on a lot more of Brienne’s passive immunity and will be that much more ready to fight the harshness of his environment. Speaking o f Brienne passing things on to him.. Today’s biggest news was that Brienne enjoyed her first bit of Kangaroo care with Maximilian. She got to hold him against her bare chest for about 20-25 minutes. She was beyond pleased. He was so tiny compared to her, but she kept him warm and calm throughout the entire thing. The little one fell asleep almost immediately and was a cute little, noodly sleepy head by the time they were done. It made me so happy to see her hold him this way. As a father and husband, I can’t do much right now other than support Brienne as much as possible and hope for the happiest things possible. Today was definitely a happiness filled day. I loved seeing Brienne’s eyes as she held him. It honestly made me envious, but it was the type of happy envy that I would never wish to take away from her. She’s done so much and definitely deserved such a great moment in her life.