Skip to main content

Changes [Part 2]

The next morning, after several doctor visits, Dad gets to go visit with Son. Mom is still on bedrest, and can't leave her room. So...dad gets to touch his son for the first time. He cries. A lot. The nurse on hand is very understanding and explains all of the machines that Son is hooked up to, and Dad feels much better. He goes back and explains everything to Mom, and the small cadre of family that have assembled in the hospital room.

Much of the weekend after that is a blur. Partially from sleep depravation, and partially because so much emotion has been expended that it's hard to think straight about it.

The end result, as of right now, is this - Aaron Keith Young was born at 12:44am on April 28th, 2006. He is 1 lb. 5.9 oz. and 13.5 inches long. He is beautiful. And he is very fragile.

Mom is healthy. She comes home from the hospital tomorrow, and that is going to be a very, very hard day for her. It will be a hard day for me, too. Because it's going to take every ounce of strength in our bodies to leave him at the hospital and come home.

The next several months (at least until Aaron is near full-term) will be spent driving back and forth to the hospital when we're not at work. We hear that in the near future, we'll be allowed to hold Aaron outside of the isolette, to continue to change him, and in the VERY near future, he'll start getting feedings of the milk that Mom is pumping for him.

You'll notice that on the right side of this blog, the Phillies Update is gone. Never to return. In it's place is going to be a link to a flickr site of Baby Aaron's photos. Feel free to order prints, if you want them, download photos, or whatever. They're there, so that our friends and family can get a good look at the little fella.

Also, this blog will shift from a running diary of Mom's goofiness during pregnancy and Dad's nervous expectations of his baby to Mom and Dad's running updates on Aaron's health, improvement, and development. So, stay tuned, folks. It's going to be a fun couple of months. :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aaron didn't make it.

About 3 hours ago, Aaron passed away. After speaking with his doctors earlier in the last few weeks, we decided that if at any point they were no longer supporting Aaron's life, but instead preventing him from dying, that we didn't want him to suffer any longer. We reached that point this morning. Aaron had been struggling for life from Day One, and after surgery, and several weeks of fighting, Aaron ran out of strength. He fought hard, but the strain of surgery just proved to be too much for him. I'm sure I'll feel up to posting more information later. I just don't seem to have any energy left in me for relating this at the moment. But I did feel it was important to share this information with all of you who have been keeping tabs on us. Thank you for your concern, your prayers, and your well-wishes during this difficult time. We love you. P.S.: I'd like to leave you with the following lyrics that popped into my head while we held Aaron as he passed away. They ...

IT WASN'T NEC!

After a long day of sitting at the hospital, hoping for the best, and preparing for the worst, the surgeon came in to talk to us and revealed to us that things went better than anyone could have possibly expected. Aaron never had an infection. What he did have though, was a hernia. He had a loop of intestine trapped beneath another loop, and while it was never "infected," it was trapped and deprived of blood, so it was dead. The surgeon removed the damaged loop, and thankfully, there is plenty more intestine left in there for Aaron. He's recovering peacefully from today's surgery, and was already at 28% oxygen (21% is room air) on the ventilator, and his other stats were all back where they were pre-surgery. He's doing fine. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and well-wishes during this time. I fully believe that Aaron wouldn't have rebounded from yesterday's procedure so quickly, and wouldn't have been as ready for today's if not for those...

Aaron's got attitude.

Apparently last night's phlegm wad gave everyone involved a bit of comic relief. Tonight, his nurse Heather told me that after all the stress Aaron had them under, when they essentially pulled a nickel sized booger out of his lungs they had to chuckle that THIS was what was causing all the problems. (I don't know about you but a nickel sized phlegm wad coming from MY throat would be gross - imagine it from someone his size). She also said the moment it was out Aaron opened one of his eyes, looked around and started kicking his feet as if to say, "What's going on guys - what was THAT !" She said about an hour later after Aaron forced them to put him back onto the regular ventilator (because he was trying to breathe on his own when he was on a ventilator that is supposed to breathe FOR him), he looked at her like, "What did I do?" Of course these are words that Heather put in his mouth, but often Aaron's nurses and I have conversations and the nurses w...