New Beginnings

He's here, He's here, He's here my oldest son shouted as I walked up the steps and Dear Hubby carried the new baby up in his car seat. It's been a long wait for the boys to see their new baby brother. He was born June 22nd at 6:53pm and all seemed well he came out fine and pink took a breath and cried and just after the nurse laid him on my chest he stopped crying and stopped breathing. His heart rate fell and the Neonatal staff was called in. Baby Logan was taken to the NICU to be cared for by the neonatal team.





He was put on a ventilator for 45 minutes though after about 15 he was breathing on his own, when the ventilator was removed he was put on a cpap machine to help keep his lungs inflated and be sure that he was stable. The cpap was removed after 8 hours and now he's just on IV fluids since he's not yet strong enough to feed.







Tuesday morning: The doctors evaluate him and decide that he's well enough to attempt feeding, so I am allowed to come and nurse him. He's a bit sluggish at nursing so it's suggested that the fastest way to get him home safely would be to nurse and then offer a supplement of expressed milk or formula. Daddy and I agree to supplement him as his health is the most important thing right now.






Wednesday: The doctors decide that he's taking in enough breast milk/formula that he can be slowly weaned off the iv fluids this happened very rapidly because he tolerated it so well. We were supposed to take him home Thursday morning. He was moved to another pod within the NICU, this new room has a bed for mom/dad and a reclining chair so that parents can be 100% involved in his care.

Thursday: We are all set to go home and just waiting on the results of his final lab work. Labs come back and his billirubin levels have spiked overnight to a level that's just too close to dangerous to allow him to go home. The doctor decides the best thing to do is to get him on phototherapy as fast as possible...he's put on a biliblanket and 5 billi lights. The hope is to get it down enough that he can safely go home on a bili blanket by Friday morning. This does not happen and by this time I've had enough of this doctor just telling me what she's going to do and leaving the room. So I request a different doctor and he's very nice and actually involved dh and I in the decisions for our son's care. This was the hardest day of them all because we were unable to hold our little boy at all not even to feed him...everything was done in his bassinet under the billi lights.

Friday: Am labs are back and baby Logan's billi count is falling so two of the lights are removed and we are now able to take him out of the bassinet on the biliblanket for 30 mins every 3 hours to feed him. 12 hours later he's taken off two more of the lights are removed leaving little Logan on just one billi light and a bili blanket. He's getting better little by little. The plan now is to wean him from the lights and blanket and send him home on Sunday morning.

Saturday: With the results from his am labs the doctor is ever hopeful that Logan will be going home soon! The remaining light and blanket are removed and the doctor says to check his billirubin in 6 hours. 6 hours go by and the results are back his bilirubin has stayed stable even without the phototherapy!!!!! The doctor comes in to talk to us and says Congratulations you get to take baby home today...So he goes home almost 18 hours before the planned discharge and he's healthy and happy!

It was a long road to getting him home, but finally he's here! Birbitt thinks that he just wanted to make a GRAND entrance into the World so that everyone would know he was the king of the house and not his big brothers! What a time we had with this one but now we are all home and so thankful for our healthy baby! Thank you Lord for carrying us through all these tough days and for bringing our beautiful baby boy home sooner than anyone expected. I also want to thank the mostly wonderful staff of the NICU where baby Logan was cared for during those first scary days!
Birbitt and her three sons finally home and together again. (Please excuse the mess we just came home from the hospital and hadn't put all the stuff away yet.)