A rough weekend

 I am not sure where to start, so I guess I will start on Thursday of last week.
Matthew was scheduled to have a minor surgery to have a central line placed in his chest on Friday. This is just a more permanent IV site. In order to do this they were going to have to give him some heavy sedation so he was going to have to re intubated. (put back on the vent) Just for the surgery. Well he ended up taking a dive late Thursday night Friday morning. He was put back on the vent and was at 100% oxygen on the vent and his oxygen saturation was dropping. That is not a good thing since he was already at 100%, there is no where to go past 100. So it was really scary watching all of this. The Doctor was equally as worried and was not sure why he was doing what he was doing. So not only were we concerned the Doctors reaction was not helping. So we spent about 3 1/2 days on pins and needles. Then on Monday this week the Doctors changed shifts and another Dr. came in and had new ideas on what they could try. So they did a bunch of  tests on him. (This is a daily thing) They found that he had severe pulmonary hypertension and also pneumonia (which is not good for him). With this diagnosis they were able to start different medications and try to treat each thing a little differently. As of today (Wednesday) he is doing quite a bit better. His o2 needs are down and he is not d-saturating as bad as he was. So we are just hoping that he is going down the right path now. We don't want to get our hopes too high. They say that with these kids (CDH kids) you take one step forward and two steps back. So we just continue to ask for your prayers for our little fighter. All the nurses and Doctors say he is feisty and stubborn. They say that is how they like the babies to be.

I hope I was able to sum up a little about what is going on with enough information, but not too much to confuse everyone. It is hard to try and explain EVERYTHING they are actually doing with him. It would take up 4 pages if I would tell you all that is going on with him. He is on crazy amounts of medication for different things, but that gets really confusing. So I will leave all of that out. If you have more questions or anything feel free to either email or Facebook me. I will try to get back to you when I have a few free minutes. Thank you for all the messages of support that we have received.

Love,
Jaime

Update:

So Matthew has been extubated since Friday morning. He is now on a cpap which is still helping him to breathe, it just does not make him take breaths like the Ventilator did. They started feeding him on a continuous feed, then yesterday they tried to feed him a little ore and to feed him every hour for three hours then wait an hour and continue. Well his feeds did not go so well throughout the night. He threw up everything they gave him. So now this morning they are going to put a different kind of tube to help with this. The Dr. also discovered that is "little" left lung has collapsed so they are working on getting that back inflated. All of this stuff they are doing to him is getting him one step closer to being able to come home. We are FAR from the talk o f getting to bring him home, but it does get him closer.  It has been extremely difficult to leave him every day. Just knowing that he is in great care and that this is what he needs in order to get stronger and be able to come home helps a little.

Thank you for all your continued thoughts and prayers,
We love and appreciate all of you.

Jaime, Jim, Finn and especially Matt

Baby Matthew

This picture was taken before the extubated him the first time. He has since been intubated and extubated again. This is the third time, so hopefully third time is a charm. I need to get better pictures of him extubated. He is even cuter with out tubes in his mouth. He still has a nasal cannula and a feeding tube in. We are keeping our fingers crossed that he does not have to go back on the vent again. They say that he is feisty and stubborn. I wonder where he might get that from? Hmmm??? They say it is a good thing for him though. So I guess I can take credit for that. Haha.... Well that is all for now.
Love,
Jaime

If I only had a brain

I want to start off by apologizing about the looks of the blog. I tried to change it and messed it up in the process and I do not have the brain power to fix it right now. So just bear with me for a few more days possibly weeks and I will get it fixed.

Update on Matthew:
On Tuesday this week they started feeding him little amounts of my milk. It will be a very slow process, since almost all kids with Daiphragmatic hernias have severe reflux. They have weened him off of the morphine that he was on after surgery. Now they just give it to him as needed. Since then he has become a lot more alert. His eyes are open almost every time we go up there. He is just that much cuter with his eyes open. Yesterday (Wednesday) they ex-tubated him. Which means they took him off the ventilator, for a very short time. They did have to in-tubate again though. He was just struggling too hard to breath on his own. They think it could be because he still has quite a bit of fluid from surgery that he needs to pee off. So they are giving him medicine for that now. Once he pees off about a pound they will try again to get him off the vent. Other then not getting off the vent like the Dr's had hoped he is doing great. It is still a very long road that we have, but things are looking really positive.

Sorry I haven't been really on top of posting. My brain just isn't working quite right yet as I am sure you can all imagine.

Thank  you all for you continued thoughts and prayers.
We love you all,
Jaime, Jim, Finn and Matt

Matthew has had surgery

Yesterday Matthew had surgery. We showed up at the hospital at about 9am and we were not sure if they were going to do surgery or not. They had to make sure that he could handle lying on his right side. (that is his big lung and "good" side) He tolerated it very well. So at about 10:30 the took him in for surgery. They started at about 11:30 and finished at about 5:30. He was a trooper through the whole thing. The nurse called us about every 1/2 hour with updates. He did really well and is still doing good. The incision is only about 2in wide. They made the incision on his left side under his arm pit area. It will heal and not even be noticeable in the future.

We have one more hurdle we have jumped, but we are still a long way from being in the clear. We have NO idea when he will be able to go home it is a one day at a time situation. The Dr's don't even try to guess or even give a timeline. They say they work in a very short time frame. (day to day) So everyday that is a good day is one day closer to getting him healthy and home.

I will keep you updated as I know more.

Love,
Jaime

Peanut has arrived

Peanut has arrived...Well now known as Matthew James. Our precious little miracle baby. He was born October, 25th 2011 at 2:46am. He was 19 1/4 inches long and weighed 6lbs 11oz. As soon as he arrived they cut the cord and handed him off to the NICU team. They worked on him for about 10 minutes to get him intubated and then off to the NICU they went. Jim got to go along with them. 

He is doing really with all things considered. He was given 100% oxygen right away and by 6:30am he was down to 30%. So he is doing really good for that. They will just keep monitoring him and lowing the O2 levels until they can get him to breathing on hos own for awhile. The surgeon will be in today sometime to check him out then they will just evaluate him for a couple days to determine when surgery can be done.

We have jumped over the first huge hurdle and now we have several more to jump, but I have faith that he will do great. We just ask for continued thoughts and prayers and I will keep you all posted.

Love, 

Jaime, Jim, Finn, and Matthew

The "official" delivery date has been set

Today I started my weekly Doctor visits so they can monitor the baby and make sure everything looks good. They normally would do non-stress tests, but they are doing something different with me. They have only told me three different times what it is called, but i can't seem to remember what they say. So what they are doing is basically an ultrasound. They are just checking the heart and other things to make sure they stay "normal". As long as everything stays looking good, then they will induce me on October 24th in the evening or the morning of the 25th. So needless to say I only have about 5 1/2 weeks left. It is getting down to the wire now. It is exciting and scary at the same time. I can't wait to finally meet peanut in person. 

Not sure how many more post there will be before peanut is born. I will post if I find anything else out. It might not be until after peanut is born and then there will be lots of updates I am sure.