First Hours of Life

Michael's first hours of life were spent in the NICU at St Joes without either of us near him. Bryt was recovering from the delivery and I was not allowed back in the NICU because they were starting his lines. He had to get a line going from his bellybutton, up one of his veins to his heart. This was delivering a medicine called Prostaglandin, it was keeping his ductus arteriosus open. The ductus is a blood vessel connecting the pulmonary artery to the aortic arch. It allows most of the blood from the right ventricle to bypass the fetus's fluid-filled non-functioning lungs.  In Michael's condition the aortic arch is smaller and pinched off at a section. So keeping this blood vessel open was very important. If you look at the picture you can see the two little lines going into his belly button. one of them goes all the way up to his heart. It is painless procedure, but the lines are a little fragile. So after he had this done we were not allowed to hold him.  

After the lines were in and he was stable the NICU called the cardiologist from Children's to come get pictures.  She was able to get lots of really good pictures and found that the left side was not nearly as small as they had told us originally. This was a very good sign! We were better off than we were told initially and could most likely have a double chamber repair.  Michael was so calm and the spirit around him was very strong.  His grandpa and I gave him a blessing and we were both very comforted and knew he would be ok.  

After the Cardiologist left and all the NICU nurses had settled down, his oxygen levels were really good. They were up in the high 90's for a couple hours, which everyone thought was surprising for a cardiac baby.  Around 11 or 12 that night, his oxygen levels started dropping so he had to get on oxygen for a little bit. He wasn't on it for very long and kept pulling it out of his nose. He did really really well at St. Joes, and the NICU nurses there were amazing! Every single one of them was awesome and full of love and knowledge.  Bryttney and I spent most of the night in and out of the NICU checking on him and lightly 'petting' him on the arms and head.