My Boy!

I guess I'll start from the beginning.  I went into the hospital at 7:30 on Sunday morning, the 30th of October to be induced.  After a long day, Christopher was finally born at 9:51 that night.  I only had to push twice!  He cried right away, so I thought they might hand him to me for a minute, but they passed him right through the window to the NICU.  Luckily, the NICU nurse took our camera so that we could get some pictures of him.

This is what he looked like after being washed up and transferred to Primary Children's Hospital. They started him on Prostaglandin right away to keep his ductus arteriosis open.  What we didn't know was that it tends to make babies a little grumpy.  He was fussy for the 4 days he was on that, but I got to hold him and sing to him and he seemed to really like that. 

We were able to bring the girls in before his surgery so that they could meet their new brother.  They loved him immediately, but they really wanted him to come home.

For those who may not know, Christopher was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.  In order to survive, he had to have an operation called the Norwood Procedure performed. On Thursday, November 3rd, Matt and I got up at 5:00 and went to the hospital to hold him one last time before his surgery.  We walked with him while they wheeled his little bed into the operating room, and when we got to the yellow line they asked us to give him a kiss and head to the waiting room.   We sat there for about 7 hours, getting updates every hour or two.  I can't describe in words how it feels to be told that your newborn baby is on a heart bypass machine.  It was the longest day of my life.  This is what he looked like when we finally got to see him again.  He had 3 chest tubes, a drain from his abdomen, several different IV lines, pacer wires, oxygen monitors, a catheter, and, of course, he was intubated.

 

 Here you can see his medication pumps on the left, the ventilator on the right, and the chest tube drains on the bottom. So much stuff for one little baby!  We got a call early Sunday morning asking for permission to close his chest, as it was left open to allow some room for swelling. One would think that giving permission to open your child's chest would automatically give permission to have it closed, but apparently it doesn't!  A few hours later we got a call saying that they closed him, but that his little heart just couldn't pump well enough, so they had to re-open him.  That was a huge disappointment.  We waited another 3 days while they gave him Lasix to try to get most of the swelling down and they successfully closed him on Wednesday.

Here he is right after they closed him.  They took advantage of the extra sedated state to insert a

nasojejunal tube so that they could begin feedings the next day.  So far he has tolerated the food very well and really seems to be on the mend after a pretty rough start.

Today they removed the chest tubes and decreased the ventilator a little bit more.  We're hoping he will be extubated in the next couple of days so that we can hold him again.  In the meantime, we are enjoying the fact that he isn't so sedated so he can look at us.  He smiled for us today, and I took a video of him looking at us, but once again Blogger isn't letting me put videos up.