Hope for Colston

Once again, I cannot believe how long it has been since I posted! 

Are you all still with me?

Baby Samuel is still measuring behind but is as healthy as can be and will be here Monday November 14!!

We are so excited to meet him. 

In the mean time, Colston decided to throw us a curve ball and need emergency surgery a week before his brother gets here. 

 He hadn't eaten since Saturday night and had just been super fussy. I thought he was just teething but wanted to take him to the pediatrician to be sure since heart babies can dehydrate faster. 

His pediatrician didn't like how he winced when she touched his belly so she sent us to the hospital to be checked out. They took a chest x ray and low and behold....Colston had what is called a Diaphragmatic Hernia. There was a hole in his diaphragm (which he was likely born with, and it just went unnoticed) and they said his intestines were being pushed through it into his chest every time he breathed.

Surgery yesterday morning went great. The surgeon wanted to go in laparoscopically first before making an incision just to be 100% sure that's what it was. Sure enough, his colon had made it's way through that hole that they measured to be the size of a dime. So they brought the colon back through and patched up the hole.

When they brought him back to his room, they did a chest x-ray and it showed air in his chest cavity which was causing his left lung to collapse. So they put in a chest tube to drain the air and luckily there should be no long term side effects from that.

It has been a crazy couple days and they expect us to be here at least until the weekend. They are hoping to take him off the ventilator in the next few hours and then after that we just need to get him to eat and have his first bowel movement so they can see how his colon reacts. 

Until then, we are just doing our usual hospital waiting. 

It's sad that the doctors and nurses have to ask us if we are *sure* that we are doing okay because we seem perfectly fine. We have to explain that while we know this was a serious thing, this isn't our first rodeo. We are no strangers to the process of weaning off ventilators and pain meds. I know most of the medical lingo they are speaking and what each beep on the machine means. 

It's just our life :)