Monday, October 19, 2009

19 Days

Wow.

What a great/crazy/stressful/love filled/crazy/great/stressful 19 days...

So Jane is here thank goodness and she is absolutely adorable and yes, I am biased. This update might be a bit long since I am going to bring everyone up to speed with Lil Jane and all her doings...

So the birth was great, it was super interesting for me and definitely a once in a lifetime experience... For those of you new to the whole C-section experience, it's pretty wild and happens really really fast... When they took Jen to put the spinal in and prep her, they put me in the longest hospital hallway/corridor I've ever seen. I'm not sure what separates a hallway from a corridor, but if a corridor is a 100+foot hallway with one chair in the middle of it and only doors on each end then I was in a corridor. So I sat in this corridor for about 15 minutes or 3 days... I realized that my sense of pre-birth timing is way off, but either way the 4ft 6in nurse came and got me and actually asked, "Excuse me sir, are you the father?" Considering she put me in this hallway with no one else I was thrown back by the question but went with her anyway. The whole process of Jen being strapped to a cross and Jane being pulled out of her was a fast one, but odd... They really did have Jen on a cross-like table with her hands straight out to the sides and one bright light illuminating her belly area, or the workbench as I called it... So moral of this story: with the light illuminating the birth and Jen being strapped to a cross just proves the point that Jen birthed the Lord...

Thank goodness Lil Jane had some fluid in their lungs that made the doctors want to check her out further. All her pre/post birth vitals were perfect and if they would not have recommended a trip to the NICU to see if there were fluids in her lungs or not, we would have gone home with a baby that seemed perfectly normal... So they took her to the NICU to run some tests and called us down about 11pm that night to get Jane so we could take her back to the room... again thinking all was good. But when we got down there to get her she sat up and her face turned a bit dusky blue (I love blue but after seeing dusky blue not so much a fan) then the PA decided to keep her overnight and ordered a chest x-ray which led to an echocardiogram to see the happenings with her heart... The next morning this is what we found out:

Jane's heart (a list of what is wrong, not all of them need to be fixed as Jane built her heart to make up for a lot of the issues, I'll list the surgeries after the issues)

1. Tricuspid Atresia
2. Dextrocardia
3. Mod to non restrictive VSD
4. Transposition of Great Arteries
5. Right Aortic Arch
6. Left Juxtaposed Atrial Appendages
7. Hypoplatic RV
8. Small PDA, PFO, and Left Superior Vena Cava.

Surgeries...

1. - Bidirectinal Glenn Superior Vena Cava to Pulmonary Artery
(to be done between 3 and 6 months of age, 2 week recovery time)

2. - Fontan
(to be done at 3 years of age, 3 week recovery time.

Day to Day:

We are to just monitor Jane consistently and fatten her up, all the while we need to watch to see if her vitals dip or her color changes to wonderful dusky blue... but other than that we are getting the routine down and enjoying out time with her.

As for Jane, for those that have yet to meet her... she is adorable... extremely independent, stubborn as can be and extremely happy she smiles and laughs like crazy...

Mom and I are doing really well, it's been great to go through all this with Jen as she is unbelievable... we are both very future focused in this situation and just want our little girl to get better. Jen and I are maintaining the positivity that has gotten us where we are today, and we can definitely tell that Jane has it as well.

Thanks to everyone, I cannot even list the people that have helped, loved, and supported us through this. Eset (my work) has been phenomenal... the entire Grandparent Gang has been unbelievable as well - all 7 of them helping out in every way they can... Our friends have been unbelievable and I do need to give a special shout out to Karina for being so awesome during all this and really taking care of Jen and I.

Other than that I am back to weekly updates on the blog... I love doing it, and I love sharing Jane's life with everyone and thank you all again.

Talk to you next week.

:)