Visit with Dr. Rouse

We had our first follow-up visit with Dr. Rouse today and it went well. He was really pleased with how Gabriel looked and our report on the past 3 weeks. Gabe has gained approx 2.5 lbs since we left the NICU. He was pleased enough with the weight gain that we now get to let Gabe wake us up for feeding at night! Hopefully we will get a little more sleep tonight, or Gabe may realize he's hungry about a half hour after the missed feeding ;) Guess we'll find out tonight. Dr. Rouse was also happy with Gabe's "social skills". He smiles all the time and "talks" to us too! His scar looks great and his little muscle hernia is the same, no worse. We will have to get that repaired at some time, but not for a few months yet. Oh, Gabe had a little bit of stitch left in his neck from ECMO, which we noticed a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Rouse went ahead and removed it, which Gabe was not too happy about, as I am sure you can imagine. We will see Dr. Rouse again next month in Evansville. They told us today there still isn't a neurologist coming to Evansville, so we will go up there in October. I think that is it. Oh wait. We had a question about Gabe's lack of pericardium, more pertaining to when he gets older and rough housing, etc. Dr. Rouse didn't seem to think that there would be any need to restrict him. His only issue should be if Gabe needs open-heart surgery at some point, so our main job in this aspect will be to educate him about his medical history when he gets old enough to leave home.