Eli takes his first look five days after surgery. He didn't appear upset at the time; he wasn't screaming or anything. I think overwhelmed would be the correct adjective.


On another note, Steve at Funky Heart posted recently about being
"Unseen" .
As I read his entry, I thought back to all the times I would look at my baby boy and feel the need to tell anyone near enough to hear me, "He has a heart defect. Yes, I know. He looks perfectly healthy."
I remember being in the grocery store once. He was around 7 months old. Thankfully, Eli never had any problem with weight gain during his infancy. He weighed 25 pounds at 5 months old.
This particular day, he was sitting in the shopping cart, flashing a smile at anyone looking his way.
As we made our way down one of the aisles, I noticed a couple coming towards us with a baby carrier in their cart. The mother was pale and slow-moving. Eli smiled at her. She smiled weakly and looked at him longingly. Then she looked at me and said, "What a blessing. You have a beautiful, healthy boy there."
I swallowed hard. She had no idea that we had spent the past 3 months in and out of the hospital (mostly in) with arrhythmia problems and that my baby boy was taking an adult dose of Amiodarone just to keep normal rhythm. She didn't know.
It was a struggle, but I quietly thanked her and kept moving. As the father approached and pushed their shopping cart past us, I caught a glimpse of the baby in the carrier, feeding tube and all.