Ethan's Heart: Everything is Fine

In case you heard through the grapevine about Ethan's heart:

By the way, we named him Ethan Tyler. In the end, the deciding factor was that I liked the sound of Ethan Tyler better than Levi Tyler after saying them about 20 times each.

Anyway, the first day he was born, the doctor gave him a clean bill of health. Then, he started breathing really fast. It's my understanding that babies should breathe about 60 times per minute, but Ethan was up to 80. This, plus the fact that the doctor heard a murmur earned Ethan his first echocardiogram, which showed he had a murmur (tricuspid valve regurgitation), patent ductus artriosus (pictured above) and a patent foramen ovale (pictured below). You probably all know that babies hearts have a physiology before they're born than after and it's supposed to switch over when they take their first breath.


But, sometimes it doesn't. Like with Ethan.

They did a follow-up echo the next day and the PDA was closed but the PFO was still, well, patent. He doctor wasn't really worried, so I wasn't worried and they let us go home.

Today, we saw the pediatrician and he couldn't hear a murmur. We'll follow up with the cardiologist in a month. Other than that, we're doing great, except for the fact that he was up every hour an a half between the hours of 11 and 4:30 and was under the impression that he was STARVING every time.

We'll have to work on that.