Lance and I wake up Saturday August 29th feeling well rested, but wishing the drama of the last 30 hours had all been a dream. We head on the road early to make the hour long drive back to our son.
When we arrive at the NICU, we are greeted by his nurse, who gives us a run down of how his night went. Everything had gone just fine overnight. He is hooked up and settled into his "tanning bed." He has an IV in his hand and a suction tube in his mouth still pumping the bile from his stomach. At first I am so afraid to touch him, he looks scary and I'm scared of disconnecting something. The nurse I think noticed our apprehension and asked if we would like to hold him, we of course jumped at the chance. While we are enjoying cuddling our sweet boy, Rowdy's neonatal specialist, Dr. Louise Baxter approached us. She will be overseeing his care while in the NICU. We sat down and discussed a game plan for Rowdy. She goes over how the NICU is ran, and who she is. Dr. Baxter said they were going to start by doing a x-ray where they feed him some sort of active material where they can see it passing through the digestive system. Rowdy now has a team of doctors, she informs us that Dr. Barry Newman would be his pediactric gastrointestinal surgeon. He would be evaluating the x-rays.
They perform the x-rays and they find what they call a "double-bubble." Meaning that they saw an air pocket in his stomach then a dark spot and then another bubble in his small intestine. The quickly leads him to believe there is a blockage just past the stomach where they saw the dark spot. He believes it is what he explained as duadenal atresia. It is a birth defect that causes a blockage that allows for little to no passage through the rest of the digestive track. So pretty much Rowdy's stomach was doing its part by creating the bile it needed to digest but it wasn't able to drain anywhere, so it just built up until he got sick. Dr. Newman informs us that the only way to treat this would be to do surgery and would be doing it in the next couple days. Lance and I try to hold back the tears, we can't believe that our 3 day old baby boy would be having surgery.
Dr. Newman ensures us that it is a pretty standard surgery. Still a big surgery but it was one he has preformed many times. We are trying to allow that to make us feel better, but we are still scared Rowdy will have to be put under and operated on. He would be making a one inch incision and repairing the blockage. He said that the recovery time for this surgery is average 4-6 weeks, but he has seen recovery as short as 2 weeks and as long as 8 weeks. The bowels are very sensitive and don't like to be bothered causing them to go into shock. The recovery is waiting for them to kick back into gear and start digesting like they should. It seems that Rowdy will be staying for quite some time. Lance and I both try to absorb the information. This is not how we planned our first weeks with our son. Dr. Newman says that he would like to schedule the surgery as early as tomorrow (Sunday) if possible, but Monday for sure. Until then, they would keep Rowdy comfortable.
We were trying to figure out where we could stay so we didn't have to keep driving home to Salem. Looking into hotels, apartments, the Ronald McDonald house. We were so blessed to be surrounded by friends and family in the waiting room at every hour we were at the hospital. Rowdy's fans took over the waiting room, family drove in from all over to be our support system. We even had a friend out of town arrange for us to stay at his brothers apartment 10 mins from the hospital for a few days so we could be close. Even though we were surrouded with chaos those first two days of getting adjusted to our "new normal" we had the love of our friends and family and for that we are forever grateful. We spent those first two days in the NICU before Rowdy's surgery just cuddling and holding our baby boy, signing endless paperwork, learning to leave our child in the hands of complete strangers, and wondering what the coming weeks would hold for our new family.
When we arrive at the NICU, we are greeted by his nurse, who gives us a run down of how his night went. Everything had gone just fine overnight. He is hooked up and settled into his "tanning bed." He has an IV in his hand and a suction tube in his mouth still pumping the bile from his stomach. At first I am so afraid to touch him, he looks scary and I'm scared of disconnecting something. The nurse I think noticed our apprehension and asked if we would like to hold him, we of course jumped at the chance. While we are enjoying cuddling our sweet boy, Rowdy's neonatal specialist, Dr. Louise Baxter approached us. She will be overseeing his care while in the NICU. We sat down and discussed a game plan for Rowdy. She goes over how the NICU is ran, and who she is. Dr. Baxter said they were going to start by doing a x-ray where they feed him some sort of active material where they can see it passing through the digestive system. Rowdy now has a team of doctors, she informs us that Dr. Barry Newman would be his pediactric gastrointestinal surgeon. He would be evaluating the x-rays.
They perform the x-rays and they find what they call a "double-bubble." Meaning that they saw an air pocket in his stomach then a dark spot and then another bubble in his small intestine. The quickly leads him to believe there is a blockage just past the stomach where they saw the dark spot. He believes it is what he explained as duadenal atresia. It is a birth defect that causes a blockage that allows for little to no passage through the rest of the digestive track. So pretty much Rowdy's stomach was doing its part by creating the bile it needed to digest but it wasn't able to drain anywhere, so it just built up until he got sick. Dr. Newman informs us that the only way to treat this would be to do surgery and would be doing it in the next couple days. Lance and I try to hold back the tears, we can't believe that our 3 day old baby boy would be having surgery.
Dr. Newman ensures us that it is a pretty standard surgery. Still a big surgery but it was one he has preformed many times. We are trying to allow that to make us feel better, but we are still scared Rowdy will have to be put under and operated on. He would be making a one inch incision and repairing the blockage. He said that the recovery time for this surgery is average 4-6 weeks, but he has seen recovery as short as 2 weeks and as long as 8 weeks. The bowels are very sensitive and don't like to be bothered causing them to go into shock. The recovery is waiting for them to kick back into gear and start digesting like they should. It seems that Rowdy will be staying for quite some time. Lance and I both try to absorb the information. This is not how we planned our first weeks with our son. Dr. Newman says that he would like to schedule the surgery as early as tomorrow (Sunday) if possible, but Monday for sure. Until then, they would keep Rowdy comfortable.
We were trying to figure out where we could stay so we didn't have to keep driving home to Salem. Looking into hotels, apartments, the Ronald McDonald house. We were so blessed to be surrounded by friends and family in the waiting room at every hour we were at the hospital. Rowdy's fans took over the waiting room, family drove in from all over to be our support system. We even had a friend out of town arrange for us to stay at his brothers apartment 10 mins from the hospital for a few days so we could be close. Even though we were surrouded with chaos those first two days of getting adjusted to our "new normal" we had the love of our friends and family and for that we are forever grateful. We spent those first two days in the NICU before Rowdy's surgery just cuddling and holding our baby boy, signing endless paperwork, learning to leave our child in the hands of complete strangers, and wondering what the coming weeks would hold for our new family.
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