Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas

Alot has happened over the past month in our house. We had a nice 8 pm emergency appointment at the pedatricians because, Owen was gagging and choking uncontrollably for a few minutes sending Mom into a panic state. Turns out he has acid reflux so they gave us medicine for that. We found out he gained an ounce a day since the last time we were there just like real boys!  He is finally longer then the arm on his Vermont Teddy Bear. He loves his teddy bear.

 We also went to CHOP for our monthly appointment. We will be scheduling his catherization at our next appointment on the 12th of January; which will determine our course of action for his surgery. They'll be able to see exactly what the arteries and veins are doing and figure out what they need to do to correct his heart.
 The last few nights he's been so excited for Christmas that he doesn't want to sleep at night or during the day.  Right now he's half asleep half awake looking at me with a goofy smile.
We are trying to lay low to keep him away from germs, he's not allowed to get sick.






It snowed alot here in Lansdale. We got about 8 or 9 inches of snow. The great thing about living on a small road in town is everyone comes out and shovels together and helps dig out each others cars. I think we are the last road to get plowed so it always looks like the roads are a complete disaster up until you get off of our street.

I had some vacation time saved up for when Owen was born but, I got laid off then. I'm taking off the week between Christmas and New Years. Woowhoo!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Owens' One Month photos...





Face to face with the mighty grizzly...

Saturday, November 21, 2009

11/21/2009 one month already!

Owen got his RSV shot this week so we will be at church tomorrow. We also saw the cardiologist and everything is still looking good, they even scheduled are next appointment in three weeks instead of two.  They do want him to be gaining more weight. He is gaining and growing so I don't see the big deal. I think they want him gaining 25 grams a day and he's gaining 17 grams. They decided to start giving him 24 calories instead of 22. We don't give him many bottles though.  He also broke the 6 pound mark.
Here are my two favorite photos of Owen...






Thursday, November 5, 2009

Owen and his Giant

My dad buys equipment from this company called Modern Ice. The salesperson Tim, sent Owen a 36" tall Vermont Teddy Bear...



Thursday, October 29, 2009

What Happened Between 9:38 PM & 2:38 AM You Ask?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

9:38pm

"At 7 o clock the midwife came in to check Ashleys' cervix and it only grew to 3 cm 60% effaced. Which is only one more cm then when she got checked in the morning. Her and the doctor came back in to talk about our options at this point. Take a break from the Pitocin, Break the water, or go back to Cervadil for the night. We decided to stay on the Pitocin even though she had her dinner sitting there waiting to be eaten. {You can't eat while on Pitocin} At about 8:15 the doctor checked her and she was almost 4 cm and her contractions were starting to get harder, this confirmed our Pitocin decision. The doctor is going to check her again at 10 to see if she dialated anymore. If she did then they aren't going to break the water, if she didn't then they are. They said they think we should have a baby by 1am but, how do they know that?"

The midwife came back and checked her at 10:30 or so and she was another centimeter dialated. Her contractions were getting pretty bad then so the nurse asked her if she wanted to try to the birthing ball. After about a minute of sitting on it she said she felt like the baby punched her; when she stood up we realized her water broke on her own. All this time we are watching, "Meet the Duggars" where their daughter in-law has the home birth. Ashleys' contractions got very intense at this point. After an hour we talked to the nurse about getting an epidural and we decided she should get it.  After the Anesthesiologist finished Ashley started to feel alot better, for about 15 minutes...
 "I just feel alot of pressure." The doctor came in again to check her dialation and he said, "You're fully dilated and I can feel the head. This is good news this is beautiful. I'll get the midwife." Everyones' beepers started going off and people started running in and out of our room. Ashley pushed for about  30 minutes. I had her foot in one hand my camera in the other.  Owens heart rate started to drop and he wasn't making anymore progress to our world, so they had to do an episiotomy and on top of that Ashley ripped inside too. That's when the blood just start gushing out like a waterfall. They quickly yanked him out, cut his cord and threw him {figure of speech} to another doctor to stablize him. It went so quickly the midwife forgot to check to see if he was a he.
  We both think everything is done and they're just going stitch Ashley back up. I went out to talk to the parents not knowing that the doctor has shoved both his hands up Ashley to try to stop the bleeding and yelled at the nurse to get a shot of something to clot the blood.  Ashley never looked so white.  There was blood everywhere! Like I said it was just gushing out. They were able to get it to stop and stitched  her back up. It would of been a million times worse if she hadn't gotten the Epidural. The nurse came in and gave us Owen to hold for a few minutes before the whisked him off to the NICU...

 We will be going back to CHOP on 11/03 to meet with our cardiologist for a checkup. The plan now is to do a catherezation in a few months in preparation for the surgery that he will have in the first year of his life.
The surgery will be to bring all the pulmonary arteries together and fill the hole between the two chambers of his hearts. They will also take care of his MAPCAs.
Owen did pass his hearing test and he doesn't have DiGeorge Syndrome!
The only thing now is he needs to start eating more and needs to put on some weight.  Babies with TOF have a hard time with that and Owen is no exception.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Owen is Coming Home Tomorrow!

We talked to the nurse today and she said he's been eating like a champ. He went from drinking 20mls last night to 50mls today! He also passed his carseat test. He is alot more awake too. They even took his IV out of his hand. We do have to take CPR classes tomorrow before he is released and set up some follow up visits for his heart. Ashley is changing his diaper for the 2nd time as a Mommy as I type.
 Ashley has been having alot pain in the morning if you could continue to pray that she will heal quickly and that she won't over do it. {ha that'll be the day}

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Q&A

If anyone has any questions for us about the delivery, the baby, CHOP, or whatever please post on a comment under this post and we will try to answer it.
       We are going to try to get some sleep now.