Dec 6th-Bath time

Friday was a fun day. Since they were confident in his ability to breathe they took out his intubation tube the night before. So instead of the breathing tube down his throat he just wears the nasal canula that pushes air into his nose to make it easier for him when he breathes.  Taking the breathing tube out also meant that they could start weaning him off of his pain meds. So he is more alert now.  Not having that breathing tube makes it way easier to hold him.  

Right before bath time Friday night. 

Heidi had held Wyatt earlier in the day so when i got to the hospital I got to hold him for about 45 minutes. So all these pictures here are all after I held him.

This our first family picture. It literally is the first time all three of us have been in the same picture. 

 Here is a video of when Heidi and I gave him his first bath. Surprisingly he really liked it. He was very calm and alert during the whole thing. It was so great.

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.

Welcome Wyatt Scott Bagley

****Disclaimer, there is blatant disregard for proper grammar in the blog. I'm sorry if its painful****

I am sitting in the General Surgery waiting room with Heidi and my parents who rushed up here with us while Wyatt goes into surgery. Its Sunday December 1st. Wyatt joined us five days earlier on Nov 26th at 10:51am at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake. He arrived after Heidi being only 30.5 weeks pregnant was admitted to the hospital 5 days prior on Thurs Nov 21st for risk of pre-eclampsia that was discovered during a routine check up.  I was of course out of town in San Francisco but was due to be back home that same night.  We were kept in the hospital through the weekend for observation and on into Monday where we hoped we would be able to go home, still on bed rest. Heidi seemed stable they had been monitoring Wyatt's heart rate for signs of distress. He would have dips in his heart rate here and there, but he was pretty stable.  Monday night, Heidi's blood pressure climbed as high as 180 and her liver enzymes had started to really increase which is an indication of a condition called HELLP syndrome.  The doctors decided that they needed to start inducing Heidi at around 1:00 AM on Tuesday the 26th for Heidi and Wyatt's safety.  By 6:00 AM Heidi's liver enzymes had doubled and her doctor told us that the only way to fix the situation was to get the baby out and they would need to do a C-Section that morning.

 Poor Heidi felt so sick as a result of the increasing blood pressure, liver enzymes, and medications she was on.

 I got suited up at 10:15 AM in my surgery suit and armed with my camera, followed Heidi into the operating room. They got the anethstesia into Heidi and began. I will say that I did pretty good seeing all the blood and other tissues as they were digging around in her belly. In a couple of minutes I could see his little head poking out then got his arms free and pulled him out by his arm pits. It was an amazing experience.  They have a little window in the OR where a waiting NICU nurse was waiting for Wyatt. They got him out and cut his cord and took him immediately over to the window. where he was taken to the NICU because he was only 31 weeks old.As a quick rewind. Heidi has worked in the newborn ICU at Primary Children's hospital for 5 years and know a lot of the Nurse Practitioners and Neonatologists here in Salt Lake as they will work in shifts as different hospitals during 2 week shifts. This becomes a blessing and a challenge for us during this whole ordeal.

less than 5 minutes later the 2 nurse practitioners came back to the window and called for Heidi and announced who they were. They had worked with Heidi in the NICU and told me that Wyatt was doing great and I could go see him.  I am just over whelmed at this point, so I just follow the nurse back to where they have Wyatt. They had gotten him mostly wiped off. He had his eyes open and I remember thinking how beautiful he looked. He looked so sweet. It  is hard to describe. I cried most of the day that day. I was so overwhelmed. I felt bad that they had to put a little breathing mask on Wyatt and poke and prod him with different needles,  but so happy to be a father.

 

 Wyatt weighed a whopping 2 lbs 4.2 oz. and was 14 inches long.  Again Heidi's co-workers that were on were so great. The Neonatologist on staff (head NICU doctor) was an awesome woman. She was so great with me and Heidi. She came back to Heidi's room w me and explained everything that had happened and what they were doing.  They wheeled Heidi back in her bed about an hour after giving birth for her to meet him. His breathing and oxygen saturation was improving very quickly.

(Heidi and Wyatt meet for the first time)

(Off C-PAP, just breathing w/ nasal canula)

His breathing improved so quickly that by Wednesday, the next morning he was breathing room air on his own. He looked so great. Heidi got to hold him twice and do skin to skin with him both times.  

Skin to Skin for the first time. They were both very happy about it. 

I love being swaddled

Yep, I'm not very big

Hangin out with Dad

Breathing on his own 24 hrs after being born. We love all his hair.

Heidi and Wyatt loving the skin to skin.

We went down Wed night to say good night to him and he was having some reflux, so they were going to stop his feedings. During that night he started to have more and started to have some apneaic episodes ( he would forget to breathe) and so they needed to get him back on some oxygen and flow to help him. They did an x-ray to see if there was anything wrong with his chest and noticed that his gut didnt look good. Thats when we got the call.

Starting to get sick Wed night

Skin to Skin before Life Flight at 5:00 am Thanksgiving.

At 5:00 AM Thanksgiving morning they called us in Heidi's room and told us they were needing to move him to Primary Children's. We hurried down there so she could hold him again before they took him. We initially were told they were going to take him in the ambulance but they were concerned enough that they called for the helicopter.  Heidi was still admitted so she couldn't leave so they allowed me to go with him.  I had always thought it would be cool to go on a helicopter ride, but obviously not under those circumstances.

Out of the helicopter and heading to Radiology at Primary Children's

Getting  his X-ray. He's under the blankets somewhere.

We landed and they loaded Wyatt's little "capsule"  onto the cart where they immediately took us down to radiology. They injected his stomach with some contrast material that would show up on x-ray to see exactly where his little intestines were running right after they come out of his stomach.  They were concerned that they were rotated the wrong direction down inside his belly. If that happens, the blood flow gets cut off and his intestines would die. Thats bad.

Feeling better at Primaries Thanksgiving morning.

Once the contrast started moving through they could see that it was moving okay they could see that his intestines were not rotated the wrong direction.  They took him up to the NICU (where Heidi is a fulltime dietician) and got him into a new incubator. There were several other lab values they were concerned about and needed to draw more labs again.  This poor little kid was so bruised from being poked so many times. It was really sad. Also, they had used so many veins on his hands and feet that they had to do a mini operation to put lines into his umbilical cord so the could draw blood and give him nutrition.

Getting Tan

This was my Thanksgiving dinner and Pumpkin Mousse (was kinda beat)

So once they got him back up to the NICU and got him stabilized. I used my phone to facetime with Heidi. She got to see Wyatt, and also the main attending  and also the director of the NICU, who Heidi loves, and I do now too. He has been so so awesome. Honestly, everyone has been so great. They have rallied around Heidi and Wyatt. Its been so awesome.

Right before I called Heidi, her doctor met with her and she signed off on Heidi getting discharged early so she could come up to the NICU. We spent the rest of Thanksgiving at the hospital.

Intro Post

Well....I always thought Heidi and I would eventually have a Blog, but I thought that it would be Heidi that was doing it.  In Utah, blogging is something stereotypically done by stay at home moms or women where they talk about their kids, their latest successful pinterest project, or favorite new recipe . Or at least thats what it seems like.  I hesitate to make that blanket statement, but thats how I feel like it is. Maybe its because I dont know any guys that talk about their blog or are sharing things they posted to their blog on different social networks. Their wives on the other hand.....is a different story.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there because I have a Blog now and look forward to sharing different events from mine and Heidi's lives with who I assume will only be family and close friends as I dont expect anything too ground breaking will posted on here that anyone outside of those circles would care about.

So here we go....