Ryan is Here...

...well, actually, he's still THERE. He is stuck in the Special Care Unit (aka the NICU). We expect him to be home tomorrow.

Now, before I provide any more details, I need to say, in big capital letters...RYAN IS FINE.

We were scheduled to be induced on Saturday. By the middle of the night on Friday, I knew we weren't going to be needing any sort of induction. By the time I got up Saturday morning, I knew I needed to get dressed and be ready to go. This was about 7:00 am. We left for the hospital at about 8:30 after I had a vision of giving birth to a baby in the toilet (a la "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant"). By the end of the 7 minute drive there was no pause between contractions.

I was hooked up to the monitoring machines in the delivery room at 9:06am. Ryan was born at 9:42am.

Thank god we live close to the hospital.

I won't provide the gory details here (but may write about it on my own blog page soon), but it was so fast that there was no time for epidurals of any of that other fun stuff that makes delivering a baby slightly more comfortable.

But, after just a short time, we had a cute little guy! I say little because his head looked TINY to me compared to Jake's.

He weighed in at 8lbs. 6ozs., and is 20" long (he's just 2 ozs smaller than Jake was).




We got back to the recovery room, snuggled, saw visitors, ate, pooped, all of that good stuff.

Now here is where I will remind you...HE IS FINE. PLEASE DON'T WORRY.

At about midnight, the nurse came to take Ryan to weigh him, which is what they do every night. She never brought him back, but returned with a NICU doctor who said that he had turned very blue when he was on the scale, alarmingly so. She had ordered x-rays to try to determine the reason for the incredibly low oxygen levels in his blood. She thought maybe since he had pooped before he was born, maybe he had some stuff in his lungs that were interfering with breathing.

Nope. Lungs were perfect. She figured out that there was another problem. She returned to my room, now 2:00am, and sat down and told me that my beautiful new baby boy, who I had just spent all day hugging and admiring, had a heart defect.

I'm not sure there is a scarier combination of words in the English language. I was shocked. He looked PERFECT. I had just been holding him. How was this possible?

She proceeded to tell me that he may need to be transferred to Children's hospital if surgery were necessary, and that they had called in the pediatric cardiologist who would be there in 20 minutes. Then, she speculated OUT LOUD that she thought it might be "transposition," or something about the arteries and veins being switched around. Horrifying.

And then she left.

I called Ben and he came right down and we sat there in silence. What do you say to each other?

After a little while, Ben went down to the NICU to see if he could at least see Ryan. The cardiologist was there, doing an EKG and was nice enough to let Ben look at it and explained some things to him.

The both returned to the recovery area and we all sat down. The doctor explained that there is a small hole between the top two chambers of his heart. He also has an enlarged valve between the top and bottom chambers on the right side of his heart. Basically, the blue blood returning from the rest of the body was getting blasted through the hole and mixing with the oxygenated blood, bypassing the lungs. The enlarged valve helps make the problem worse by restricting blood from flowing to the bottom chamber where it's supposed to go. Confusing? Well, he drew us a diagram. I should post it. It helped.

This all sounds absolutely horrible...until you learn the all babies have this hole while they are developing. Most are just closed up by the time they are born. There are plenty of adults walking around who STILL have this hole...and they are fine. The doctor explained that the worst case scenario would be that the little hole would not close and they would have to go in and close it, and trim the enlarged valve. He wanted to say that it wasn't a big deal, but corrected himself to say that EVERY heart surgery is a big deal...this was just one of the not-SO-big deals.

Right.

But, the best case scenario, and what he expected to see happen, was that we would wait a few days and the problem would resolve itself. The hole would close, the blood would go where it should, and everything would be fine.

And THANK GOD, that seems to be what is happening. At first, he was on 100% oxygen to keep his O2 saturation at acceptable levels. They kept gradually decreasing it, and he kept doing well. Today, he had NO O2, and was perfect.

Unfortunately, the cardiologist was not in today so could not review the progress. The doctor that did see him said that he was fine.

My big pink piggy does not look like he belongs in the NICU. He looks huge in there.

So.............we expect him to come home tomorrow. Good as new :)

I know I kind of avoided everyone and didn't share this info right away. I didn't want to alarm anyone until we knew what we were dealing with. Our hopes for the best possible outcome seem to be coming true, and we are so happy.

Thanks to everyone for all of your thoughts, prayers, and good wishes. We love you all and know we are lucky to have such wonderful friends and family.

Stay tuned for your regular updates from Jacob.....................

Love, Erin