Happy Birthday

We knew it would take a life changing experience to make us become a 'blog' family...
Saturday August 18,2007 we welcomed Baby boy Nelson into our family. Mom did exceptional and things went pretty much as planned. At that point he was without a name but came in at a whopping 5 pounds 6 ounces and 20 inches long. The feeling of love that is seared upon your heart the moment that your eyes lay hold upon the little guy is indescribable. We finally believed everything that we had heard, love truly took on a new meaning that evening. We were able to bathe our new little guy later that night and Sarah got a chance to feed him. Early Sunday morning Jack (as he would soon be called) started to look a little dusky and his blood sugar was low facilitating a trip to the NICU to check things out. Jack had swallowed a lot of fluid at birth and needed a lot of suction to get it out of his lungs. In order to assure he didn't aspirate any fluid into his lungs they took an X-ray and saw clear lungs but also saw an enlarged heart. The doctor then heard a murmur and so they ordered an echo cardiogram to take a look at his heart.
After many hours of waiting, the neonatologist came to our room around 5 pm and told us our son had a serious congenital heart defect that would necessitate a trip to Primary Children's Hospital and eventually a major open heart surgery. The next few hours were a blur. Sarah was quickly discharged from the hospital only to run up the hill to meet Jack in the PICU. A flood of nurses and doctors explained exactly what was wrong with his heart. The plumbing to his heart was messed up, more particularly the oxygenated blood was going in a circle from his heart to his lungs but not getting to his body (Transposition of the great arteries). He also had a small aortic arch (Coarch) and a hole in the bottom of his heart between the two ventricles (Ventricular Septal Defect) plus another hole between the two atria(Atrial Septal Defect). It seemed the list just kept getting longer and longer and our hopes of a healthy newborn diminished quickly. That night, both mom and baby had a wonderful blessing from Grandpa which gave Sarah a gift of peace and a charge not to worry. As comforting as it was the worry and heart ache were inevitable.