A Joyful Life: 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.