Ventalators, heart conditions, feeding tubes,and other things Obadiah

We have 7 wonderful children. The first 6 were born naturally ( a couple even at home ) and were healthy "normal" children. Then came #7, Obadiah! The pregnancy was a normal healthy one, nothing out of the ordinary. I have always carried my babies past term and Obadiah was no exception. I was 13 days over due. On Saturday morning, May 17th, I woke up and noticed that I didn't feel any fetal movement. After eating breakfast and still not having any movement I called my midwife, she instructed us to make our way to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital at 11:30 in the morning. They did an ultrasound and found that I was low on amniotic fluid after consulting the on call Dr. they decided to keep us and start pitocin, about an hour into that they broke my water. Thick meconium is all that came out. They still thought that they could have me deliver vaginally, but about 5 minutes later the baby's heart rate dropped and they called for an emergency c-section. I was scared to death. There were 3 nurses, the doctor, and a NICU doctor and nurse in the room. As soon as our baby boy was born the NICU doctor whisked him out of the room, I didn't get to hold him, touch him, or even see him. After they were gone I looked at Myron, my husband, and said "he didn't even cry". Myron just held my hand.
While in the recovery room the NICU doctor came down to talk to us. She didn't come with good news. She told us that she didn't expect our son to live through the night, they were doing everything that they could but his out come didn't look promising. He was born with severe meconium aspirations and she suspected that he had a heart condition. Myron could go with her to see him for a minute but they were still working on him so he couldn't stay long. When Myron came back down to the recovery room, I was hoping to hear something positive but he didn't have anything positive to say. Things looked really bad. I was transferred to a room, and shortly thereafter they allowed me to go see our son. I wasn't prepared for what was awaiting me. He was completely sedated, intubated (breathing tube), and there were IV's and tubes and wires everywhere. It was very hard to see him laying there like that. While we were in the NICU the doctor told us that they were working on getting him stabilized so that they could bay flight him to the children's hospital. It took them 8 hours to finally get him stable enough for the trip.
Myron went up to the children's hospital in the morning, but not much had changed.
I was released on Monday morning and we headed up to the hospital. He looked so different. His birth weight was 6 pounds 10 ounces and in just 3 days he was up to almost 10 pounds! He was retaining all of his fluids. He was on 10 different medications, still sedated, and still intubated. But he was taken off of the conventional ventilator and put on a high frequency ventilator. ( instead of slow even breathing this machine puts very fast breaths into their lungs, it makes their whole body shake)
I will never forget walking into that NICU and walking past all of the tiny preemie babies to get to Obadiah-he was in the last bed. One of the first things that we noticed was how many meds were on his pole, he had 10! Looking around the room I noticed that most of the other med poles only had 3 or 4 meds. In the days that followed it became very evident that almost everyone that came in contact with Obadiah didn't think that he was going to live. On Sunday morning when Obadiah was admitted to the children's hospital the oxygen level in his blood was 17%. ( the normal level is 100% ) The doctor explained to us that when the body has that amount of oxygen it basically has to choose which organs will get oxygen because there isn't enough for all of them. If Obadiah makes it there is a great chance that you'll be facing some sort of brain trauma.
On his 10th day of life his doctors called us to set up a conference. In that meeting we were told that Obadiah was on maximum support and he was no longer a candidate for a procedure called ECMO. I was heart broken. I made it to the hall way before I broke down. This was the first time that I thought I might not be bringing my baby home. We already had lots of people praying for God's will to be done and that above all that God would be glorified through Obadiah's life, no matter how long or short it might be.
Day 12- I walk into the NICU to see Obadiah and as I'm sitting there watching him, I notice that he is sucking his ventilator tube! I was ecstatic! The nurse was very quick to tell me that when babies are sedated as heavily as Obadiah was they don't suck on their vent tubes. But I knew what I saw. He did it several more times that day! The next morning when I went to see him I walked in to find my baby with a pacifier in his mouth!! I couldn't believe it. The nurse cut his pacifier so that it would fit around his ventilator tube and he was sucking on it! They also decided to start weening a couple of his sedation meds so he had his eyes open! It was a great day for us. I know that these sound like pretty small things but I felt like they were huge leaps in the right direction.
Two days later we got a phone call from Obadiah's doctor saying that his heart medication had stopped working. He was stabilized but he would be going into surgery first thing in the morning. He was born with a coarctation of the aorta and a bicuspid aortic valve. They would be repairing the coarc. Surgery went well, and Obadiah was transferred to the CVICU. ( cardiovascular intensive care unit )
It seems that once Obadiah had his coarc. repair things started going in the right direction for our little man.
Obadiah had to have feeding therapy and during one of his sessions the therapist didn't feel comfortable with the way he was eating so she ordered a swallow study. The study didn't take long because he failed immediately. His nurse looked at me and said "o.k. so he needs a feeding tube" and walked away. Huh? And thus we were thrown into the world of feeding therapies, feeding tubes, and thickening agents.
A week after his feeding tube placement we were finally on our way HOME!! Obadiah was 6 weeks old. Although Obadiah was our 7th child, I all of a sudden felt like a first time mom. And in some ways I was, this was the first time I had a cardiac baby, first time I'd had a baby with a feeding tube, first baby with lung disease and developmental delays. But I couldn't have been happier to be going home with him.