I never thought I'd be so excited to see someone poop...

...but I am.

Aaron's probably in the middle of his first actual bowel movement right as I'm typing this. He was starting when I changed him around 8:00pm, and the nurse thought she might find a little surprise waiting for her when she changed him next.

As weird as this all sounds - his first poop is a big, big step for the little guy. He's still chugging along, breathing room oxygen, on his own with just the aid of the CPAP (which simply keeps his lungs open, so he can easily fill them).

Also, the nurse practitioner informed us that they could no longer hear the murmur from his PDA valve, so that may have finally closed. We'll know for sure after the next heart ultrasound tomorrow.

That's all for now. Nothing really new to report other than the above. That's probably a good thing. :)

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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...

Status Quo*

* (asterisk denotes super-terrific happy news, but not the kind that involves massive amounts of urine) Everything is "as-is." I.E. as it has been. He's still not peeing, still high on the vent settings, and still in a very precarious situation. However...thanks to his tremendous nurse today, both DrummerWife and I were able to hold our little boy today. She took him out of the isolette completely in his bedding and set him into my lap. For 45 minutes, Aaron laid in my arms, and I talked to him, and cradled him, and cried over him. I've never been happier in my life than in the moments that Aaron was that close to me. He's beautiful, he's precious, and he's my boy. And no matter what happens, no one or no thing can ever take away the memories that I have of holding my son. I'm going to attach a number of photographs. Since my flickr account is completely maxed out for the month (until Thursday) I'm just uploading them here. If you want to download...

Baby On Your Six

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