First Hold!

I thought I would take a minute and share an amazing thing which occurred today. Lynette had the opportunity to hold William for the first time. It couldn't have been more tender or sweet. We were given a book the first time we were pregnant entitled, "Babyhood". As we were reading the author shares about how much he loved his wife and how beautiful he thought she was shortly after birth. I must admit, when birth came and went as it did, I was in complete shock but I am sure Lynette looked gorgeous. But I will say that I have never seen her look so beautiful as she did today holding our little boy. She's a mother! No one can take that away from her. To see her holding this baby was incredible. We shared in some tears and were so overcome by the whole moment. It couldn't have come at a better time. I have some pictures and movies of the event so take a look and enjoy.

We have had a pretty rough week. William started to suffer a bit last Monday and began to require more assistance. I believe last week he was eating, off meds, and doing exceptionally well. Monday came around and he stopped eating, got back on meds, and required a lot of help from the ventilator. I left work on Wednesday to go talk with the doctor in the NICU and he was less than cheerful. Summarizing what he said, he said Will would most likely not recover from his issues. As a result, he said he would probably die. Lynette and I broke down in tears and had a little discussion with Will to tell him what the doctor said. It was a difficult moment.

We have found out that Will's kidneys and liver are in pretty bad shape and have only limited function going on right now. The kidneys stopped passing fluids and he swelled up again. They put him on Dopamine to help get the blood pressure up and gave him some Albumin and Lasix to help him start urinating. This is very important obviously because if he doesn't he will not be able to remove the toxins in his body. The swelling in his body is due to fluid not being kept within the blood vessels. This is a cause of his poor kidney function. His liver is supposed to make a protein (Albumin) that helps draw fluid into the vessels and keeps it there to keep the body working nicely. But his liver is not working very well. It is having a hard time keeping up with the demand his body has right now. We could help his liver by giving him breast milk but he can't have it due to the function of his digestive track. He runs the risk of rupturing the intestinal wall and causing infection. So, the one thing that helps him will also hurt him.

I was able to talk with a doctor on Thursday who was not so pessimistic. He told us that his biggest concern was to get his kidneys going. He says that he isn't overly optimistic nor pessimistic. He said he was stable but had a long ways to go. He was upbeat and very good about explaining Williams needs. Then on Friday I came home to find William with a team around him to taking x-rays of his chest. He had a lot of garbage suctioned out of his lungs and it was yellow. They took it to go get cultured and tested for infection.

He is doing much better now and the cultures have come back negative for the first day. So, after all of this and hearing everything this week we had such a complete opposite today. It was such an amazing thing to see and ranks up there with the top moments of our lives.

We love you all and hope you are all doing OK. Again, thank you for the prayers and your faith.