August 28th, 2009...The day everything went wrong...VERY wrong.

I had noticed in the 2 days prior that Rowdy would occasionally gag for no reason and seem to dry heave. The nurses assured me it was just caused from some residual mucus in his stomach left over from birth. In the VERY early morning on the 28th, Rowdy seemed VERY worn out and stopped nursing...I was concerned his demeanor had changed. At around 4am his nurse came into our room to do the standard vital check. After checking him, she thought that his temperature was a little low and wanted to take him down to the nursery to check his blood sugar levels. Lance got up to go with her and Rowdy, to this point one of us had always been with him. Our nurse said to not worry Lance didn't need to get up, she would be RIGHT back. I of course couldn't go back to sleep without my baby in the room. 30 mins goes by, and the nurse finally comes back, she said that his blood sugar levels were low and they wanted to keep him down there for a little while to monitor him, she left again. Now left in the room by ourselves, I start to cry (hormonal and sleep deprived). Lance climbs in the hospital bed with me to cuddle while we wait for them to bring Rowdy back to our room all better again. That moment never happened...


The nurse came back in within the hour and said we needed to get ourselves together and come with her...they were going to be escorting Rowdy down to the NICU and we needed to go with him. In shock, we try to stay focused on her words. She said that Rowdy had had a coughing spell and had thrown up a significant amount of bile...they proceeded to suction out his stomach, pumping out 5 oz of bile, dark green angry looking bile. Lance and I gather ourselves up and the nurse escorts us down to the nursery. I was holding it all together until I walked through the nursery doors and saw my sweet peaceful little baby boy sleeping in the middle of a flurry of nurse hurridly getting him prepared to be moved down to the NICU...I lost it, not able to pretend to be strong anymore, I couldn't hold back my tears. This felt like a dream, this wasn't supposed to be happening. They can't tell us at this point what's wrong with Rowdy. Lance and I, along with two NICU nurses start the trek to walk our baby downstairs to get him set up for further evaluation.

We arrive down in the NICU at around 6am. They place our little boy in a bed and start hooking him up to wires and the poking and prodding starts. He is still so peaceful, barely noticing the IVs, suction tube placed thru his mouth to his stomach and the heel pricks. We wait for a neonatal specialist to look our son over and start trying to figure out what is happening to our son. Dr. Nicole, the specialist, decides to do an x-ray on his abdomen. She said because there was so much concentrated bile in his stomach she had a feeling that there was something going on in his digestive track that wasn't allowing anything to drain. They do the x-ray and see gas bubbles in the stomach and then and dark spot and then bubbles in the small intestines. The dark spot they believe is some sort of blockage. Dr. Nicole said she was going to contact her superiors up in Portland and ask them what would be the best course of action, but that if they thought he might require some sort of surgery that Salem doesn't have the surgical resources that Portland has, and that Rowdy would likely be transferred up there.

We wait for her to get in touch with the doctors. While we are awaiting their guidance, Dr. Nicole comes back to Rowdy's bedside to discuss something else on her mind. She starts by asking us if we see family traits in Rowdy when we look at him. We of course say yes! He has my lips, he has his daddy's chin...She said the reason she was asking was Rowdy has certain features that leads her to believe that he might have Trisomy 21, or down syndrome. She goes on to list...digestive blokages are common among DS babies, he has a larger space between his big toe and other toes, lower muscle tone, and shorter thumbs, but all of physical markers could also just be passed down family traits. There are also many things that negate her suspicion, one big one being that he nursed great and had a strong sucking urge, something that most DS babies struggle with. She wants to request a genetic blood test that may take a couple weeks to get back just to be sure. Lance and I both sit there trying to absorb the conversation we just had. We are taken aback because he had been seen by our doctor, nurses directly after birth, nurses over the last two days, and a pediatrician the day before, not to mention the family and friends, and nobody had even speculated he might have Down syndrome. We even had a hard time seeing it, even when we looked at him in this moment. But, I guess we will put those thoughts on the back burner...Rowdy's physical health in this moment is what fills our thoughts. We would find out three weeks later through a chromosonal analysis that Rowdy is indeed what we have dubbed "chromosonally blessed." =)

It is decided that Rowdy is to be transferred up to NW Neonatal Specialist up at St. Vincent's NICU in Portland. They said the transport team would arrive in 30-45 mins. I need to be ready and discharged immediately to be able to ride in the ambulance with Rowdy. I make the mad dash upstairs to start the normal 3-4 hour discharge. The nurses were GREAT, and literally ripped my IVs right out...packed up my room, got me dressed, and got me out in 30 mins. They are amazed I am doing so well recovering from my c-section that wasn't even 48 hours before. I head back down to the NICU and the transport team are already there. The stretcher they are moving him into is a scary spaceship looking thing that has an incubator on top. The tears just won't stop...its only 12:30p and at this point I haven't slept in 10 hours. I am physically and emtionally drained, and I don't think my face could have been more puffy, and my eyes were getting raw from the tissue. This was not what I had planned for the first days with Rowdy.
Once they had Rowdy loaded up, I hopped into the front seat of the ambulance, I kissed and gave Lance a big hug. He would be following us in our car. We pull away from the hospital starting our hour long commute up to St. Vincents. Both exhausted, Rowdy and I slept the whole way.