Micah's First Three Days

*Quick preface*: The few people that read my blog will probably already know this story and the one's to follow; it's been a while now since Micah's surgery (actually it was one month ago yesterday!). However, I'm finding it very therapeutic writing out the details of these stories, and I also enjoy being able to look back and re-read his story...:-)

With that said, the first few days in the NICU (postpartum unit for me) were a crazy whirlwind. It was so much to take in what was going on. Andy went home to stay with Noah at night and then came down to the hospital during the days (while both our mom's took turns watching Noah - they are heaven-sent.) I was with Micah most of the time during the day and was in my room at night. I would wander on down the hall to the elevators a couple times each night/early morning to go check on Micah and spend some time with him. My nurses thought I was crazy up and walking the night after my surgery, but it felt good to get out of bed and move around!

We found out Micah would be having surgery on Friday (3 days after he was born). We had been in touch with our three pastors from the beginning and also updating everyone at our church about the situation. It turns out all three of the pastors were sick, which prevented them from visiting, but one of them brought up the idea of us potentially baptizing Micah before his surgery. We definitely wanted to have him baptized but hadn't thought about the idea of doing that before his surgery, or even necessarily in the hospital. Andy and I talked about it and decided we wanted to go ahead and do it. So Thursday evening, Micah was baptized by his Daddy in the NICU!! What a special moment it was! And the realization in that moment of the power of baptism, that it is GOD that does the baptizing, not MAN, was awesome.

Later that night came one of the many hard lessons I learned during this journey. It was around 11 pm when I wandered down to the NICU to see Micah, it was nice spending time with him. His nurse let me hold him skin to skin for a long time (I hadn't been able to do that in a couple days due to a central line catheter they placed in his umbilicus - she felt comfortable letting me do it as long as we were both extra careful with the line.) I think she realized the importance of this for both Micah and I, especially to have this moment before he went into this huge surgery the next morning.

~~Sidenote: up until this point, I felt as though I had been forced into God's presence like never before. I felt there was truly nowhere else I could go. I felt He was teaching me that I needed to give up control of the situation, considering I really had none whatsoever. I definitely have control issues (I am a control freak, really!), and was learning at this point to put Micah in God's hands fully and trust that He would take care of my son, whatever that would mean.~~

Shortly after we got Micah back in his bed, his breathing became very labored. He began having moderate retractions (he was using extra muscles to breathe that normally you wouldn't use); being a nurse, this was really hard to watch happen in my own child, my brand new baby; I had really only seen it in videos in nursing school, and occasionally in the really sick kids I worked with at Shriner's. Shortly after the retractions began, I saw his oxygen saturation start to drop - it dropped to 70% two times (and normally should be above 92%). I completely lost it at his bed, and through my weeping I said over and over, "I can't handle this, I can't do this." His nurse was amazing, and kept encouraging me with the kindest words, without falsely reassuring me of what was happening. His oxygen saturations came back up, but he continued retracting.

Shortly after, I headed back to my room and began to pray. I had a realization that up until that point, I had accepted Micah's diagnosis. I had accepted the fact that he needed surgery. I felt I had completely given up control on these things and given them to Jesus, and was even beginning to be okay with them. But if anything was taken out of the pretty little "box" I had put it in, I was a mess! I couldn't handle it. Through this situation though, I realized I needed to give up control of everything. I needed to completely give Micah into Jesus' hands, whatever that might mean, and pray with all that I had that God would restore his health and heal him! This might not seem like a huge revelation for some, but for me, it meant PEACE. It meant that I needed to learn to trust God and give it ALL up, and the peace that came with that truly surpassed my understanding.

Grandma Eileen meeting and holding Micah.

Grandma Heidie's turn.

Papa Bill meeting Micah.

Great Papa Don meeting Micah.

Micah's home away from home for 19 days...

Micah's Diagnosis

After about 30 minutes of having Micah wih me in the recovery room, the NICU team wanted to take him and start further assessments. That was definitely hard with him leaving, but I knew it was what was best. Andy followed him and my Mom came to stay with me.

It was neat because they passed the waiting room on their way to the NICU, so Noah got to see him for the first time, along with the rest of our families, and Andy got to announce that we had another boy! Noah was in awe of his baby brother...

Andy told me later that shortly after they arrived in the NICU, they put a tube in Micah's mouth down to his stomach and suctioned 80 ml. of fluid!! About 30 minutes after they took him from me, I asked my nurse if she could get an update. She called down there and came back to tell me they had consulted a surgeon...my stomach sank, and at first I thought, "No way does my tiny precious baby need surgery!"

Waiting in the recovery room was torture, but I was really glad to have my mom there with me. Finally, after about an hour and a half, I was able to leave and they wheeled my gurney to the NICU. I got to see Micah, he was hooked up to monitors, had IV's, and multiple other things. It was definitely hard seeing my baby like that, but I knew he was in good hands.

We found out shortly after his confirmed diagnosis: duodenal atresia. The portion of his bowel right after his stomach had re-closed at some point during development, which made sense that no fluid could pass through and was why his stomach was so distended. It's also one of the reasons he was on the small side for weight. We also found out he would definitely need surgery. He would obviously not be able to take anything by mouth and was started on TPN (total parenteral nutrition, a mixture of electrolytes and nutrients that is given through his vein). He had a nasogastric tube inserted to empty his stomach of any air/bile to give his bowels complete rest.

My ultrasounds throughout my pregnancy were normal, but the surgeon said that part of the bowel starts out closed during development, will open at some point, and sometimes re-close, which is what most likely happened in Micah's case. They ran a lot of other tests on him as well because a lot of the time this diagnosis is linked with a lot of other things, suh as down syndrome, heart defects, kidney defects, etc. His echo on his heart came back normal, the renal ultrasound to check his kidneys came back normal, brain ultrasound came back normal, and the first chromosome study came back normal.

So now we're waiting on the results of the deeper study of the chromosomes, which look more closely at the inside structure of the individual chromosomes.

Tiny precious baby.

Tiny baby feet.

Looking at Daddy.

Proud big brother Noah!