Wyatt's Story continued... Friday Nov 29th-Dec 4th

Friday Nov 29th

Heidi and I slept in our own bed for the first time in a week, first time in 2 weeks for me since I was in San Francisco the whole week before he was born. That was really nice sleeping in our bed. I know for me it was the most tired I have ever felt, so I can only imagine what Heidi felt. It was a total exhaustion, physically, mentally and emotionally.  We both commented on how weird it felt to go Thanksgiving night and not have a baby with us. I know it was especially weird for Heidi. She's not pregnant anymore but we dont have the baby with us. It was a strange deal. 

Just getting some more light therapy.

He was really stable through out the day Friday and there wasnt much going on. He was under the
lights so we couldnt take him out or really touch him alot so he could absorb it appropriately.

Saturday Nov 30th

We finally got to hold Wyatt again on Saturday. Up to this point Heidi was the only one of us that had held him. Wyatt had stabilized enought that the nursing staff felt that it would be okay for us to hold him. Being the awesome husband, I let Heidi go first. She took about 15 minutes and then she let me take over and Wyatt and I were able to spend a half an hour together.

My First time holding Wyatt. It took them like 20 minutes just to get him ready to take out of the isolette.

This a good picture to really see the scale of how small he is next to my hand.  Its pretty awesome

This is how big his diaper is.

So up to this point Wyatt had not really stooled in his diaper. Which is another reason they were concerned they would need to do surgery.  Saturday  he finally started to have stuff show up in his diaper, but not enough. His belly was getting more swollen and they wanted to give him one more day to see if he could start moving things through.

They put a little splint on his left arm so he doesn't pull out his IV.  You can see his little belly getting swollen

This is Saturday night.  He has seven different IV lines supplying Medications and his nutrition

Sunday Dec 1st- Surgery

Heidi and I got to the hospital at about 9:00 on Sunday morning. We came in and sat down by Wyatt's bed. The Neonatologist came in and talked to us and we could even tell that his stomach was noticably more swollen. The surgeon came in as well and talked to us about how he was more swollen, and in obcvious pain. You could see on his little face all the pain he was in. He just had a grimace on his face and you could tell he was trying to cry even though he couldnt make any noise due to the breathing tube. It was brutal to have to see him like that. The surgeon told us that Wyatt had obiously deteriorated quickly over night and they didnt think they should wait until Monday for surgery. They told us that they were going to do it sometime that morning and left.  Heidi decided to go pump. Before she could finish they had called up for him to come down to the OR.

This is what he looked like post op Sunday morning. You can see the bandage covering his incision.  It goes across his whole belly.

It was a long 2 + hours waiting for them to call us in the waiting room. Our families came up and sat with us.  We got the call and he did well during the procedure. They told us that he did have and obstruction due to a volvulous which is caused by the small intestine twisting on itself and cutting off all the blood flow. This piece of bowel had probably gotten kinked off  soon after he was born because it had started to deteriorate and had perforated leaking some stool into his abdomen.  The surgeon said he washed out his abdomen really well  to help prevent him from getting septic.

They dont go and reconnect the bowel right away. The patient needs time to heal and let any infection and inflammation  go down. So, the surgeon left 1/2 inch of the cut end coming from his stomach out of Wyatt's belly so when they start feeding him the food has some where to go. The partially digested food will come out into a little bag. With the other cut piece that leads to his rectum, they connected a tube to it that runs out of his incision. They will re-inject the partially digested food into that tube so he can absorb as much of nutrition as possible. We absorb different nutrients in different areas of our small bowel so they that is why they "re-feed" him.

During surgery they needed to place and arterial line where they could do all the lab draws instead of poking himevery time. Unfortunately the line clotted off so they couldn't use it. The vessel started spasming and cut off all the circulation to his hand and it turned white. So they hurried and removed it. His poor little hand turned dark purple.  They had to check the circulation with a small doppler machine to see if they could hear a pulse. Luckily they could hear a slight pulse and his hand looked better by Monday morning. But were worried he could lose fingers or even his hand. Poor little guy has had a rough go.

 

Doing his cares before we left Monday night. 

Tuesday morning and all cozy

Monday and Tuesday Dec 2nd & 3rd

He was doing better when we got there in the morning. He was really swollen from the surgery because they give him so many fluids.  Monday was really just a rest day. The surgeon came by and took off his bandage. He wanted to look at the incision and see if  there were signs of infection.  It looked a little red so they left it un covered so they could make sure they kept and eye on additional signs of infection.

Tuesday they started giving him a few CCs of Heidi's breast milk through a small feeding tube.

Tuesday night getting curled up. 

Wednesday Dec 4th

They took out his intubation tube today.  Which brings him one step closer to us being to hold him. Feeding was going well. We got an awesome surprise from one of Heidi's friends. She made this awesome quilt to cover Wyatt's isolette to keep it dark for him. She even put his name on it. How awesome is that. Still so amazed at the generosity and kindness of people we know as we have gone through this.  Our close friends, The Millers, came by our house after trying to see us at the hospital and brought us a meal to heat up and eat one day.  They are great people. They are like my second family.

Our friend Kristen surprised us with this awesome quilt to cover Wyatt's bed and keep it dark.