Today

Today was a pretty good day. Things got a little scary for us when on the way up to the hospital, the doctor called to tell us that Carter has an infection. She wanted permission to take some spinal fluid from him to test for Meningitis. The doctor thinks that it's unlikely that he has it, but they want to cover all of their bases. Poor little Carter got sent through the ringer today. He had a VGUC this morning which tested his bladder to see if any of the urine was refluxing back into his kidneys. We found out that his actually does, so that is just one more thing to add to his list. I guess that this kind of thing can cause a lot of urinary tract infections, so they believe that could be the infection that he has. We won't really know for sure until all of the labs come back on Monday. The treatment for that problem is to be on a low-grade antibiotic until he either outgrows it, or has surgery to correct it. The doctors didn't really seem to concerned about it at this point.
We also got the results of the echo back, and found out some problems. First, he had a valve that should have closed at birth, but was open a few days ago. The echo from yesterday shows that it has almost closed on it's own, so we have nothing to worry about as far as that goes. The second thing they found was a valve that crosses across his airway that really shouldn't be there. They are going to do a CT scan on Monday to see if that is what's preventing him from coming off of the high-flow Oxygen mask. If that is the problem then it will need to be corrected soon to help him with his breathing. If not, they acted like it was nothing to worry about. They did suspend his feedings when they found out about his infection, but fed him 10 ccs when we left. Hopefully he'll digest it.
The Plastic Surgeon came to visit Carter today, and told us that they would repair his lip at the age of 3 months as long as he weighs 10 pounds. His palate will be repaired at age one, but will require two different surgeries. His prostetic ear will be done at about the age of 5. All in all, it was a good day, and it was nice to feel like we're making some progress on everything.