Christmas Eve

This morning Preston and I got up to the Children's NICU at 8:00 to spend some time with Nathan before he went in to surgery. The surgery was to fix a perforation he has in his small intestine. Right now he is not able to eat or pass any waste (poop) through his body but instead it comes out the side (where they had a drain for draining at his initial infection). The plan was to find the dead intestine and take it out. However, when the doctor went in the small intestine was glued together. It got this way from all the waste he dumped into his abdominal cavity when he first got sick. The surgeon would have damaged the entire small intestine if he had tried to separate it. So, for now we are waiting a few more months to try the surgery again. The plus and negative of today. The negative: Nathan really needed this surgery to get better and now that is on hold. He is still at a high risk for infection. He will not be able to start feeding for at least two months (something that is very crucial for their growth at this time. Positive: they did not find an entirely dead intestine (in fact what they saw looked good and they weren't able to get to the bad part) and he will be a little bigger the next surgery go around, so that will be good for him. He tolerated the surgery well and has been recovering fine. (He still has a recovery period because they literally cut open his stomach).

Owen is doing well. I was able to hold him today!! It was an indescribable joy. He really seemed to enjoy it too. Hopefully Owen will be getting off his ventilator in the next few days. He is also up to 5.5 ml of milk every three hours.

Logan is doing well and spent the day with his grandmother, CiCi. He really had a lot of fun.

We hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas.