Wisdom Heart

In this post, I am going to continue the story where I left off yesterday.
I apologize for the long posts but I want to get all this history down so people will be able to understand the context of this weblog.
So as I had explained in the last post, Sophia was born at 4:32pm on October 27th, 2004.
And all seemed to be fine, other than the anxiety I had about caring for and nurturing this small person we had just ushered into the world. And my wife's total exhaustion from pushing. As soon as Sophia was all done being evaluated she was given to my wife and she immediately latched on and began to breastfeed. Awesome.
Once we were moved to our room, we got settled in and were informed that Sophia would pretty much be our responsibility to care for, but we would get some assistance and instruction from the nursing staff. And, we could utilize the nursery in the wing if we had too. Soon I got to assist in giving Sophia her first bath while my wife rested. Shortly after this we noticed Sophia was having some issues breathing. Mostly just a stuffy nose as far as we could tell. So I called the nurse and she thought maybe she seemed "a little dusky" but also thought it was something in her nose. She suggested we take her to the nursery to have her nose suctioned and let them keep an eye on her. Not long had passed and the nurse came back and informed us that they were not having much success clearing her nose and said they were going to send her down the hall where they had a better suction.
Now, this term "a little dusky", which in this context means a little blueish, was the one that would change things for all of us. Apparently the place with the better suction was the Neonatal ICU. It was getting pretty late in the evening by this time and all of the visitors we had had were gone and we were pretty anxious about what was happening but assumed it was no big deal. After all, this was all new to us.
Fortunately, there was a great neonatalogist on call that night. He thought that there may be something more to this than just some junk in her airway. So he ordered a chest x-ray and he wasn't sure but suspected a possible problem with her heart anatomy. He came down to our room and explained this situation to us and of course we were incredibly distressed by the news. All you want to hear after a very long time of contemplating having children and nine months of pregnancy is the baby is healthy. I think we would have been freaked out by some minor problem. To hear that her heart may not work right and may not even be anatomically correct was devastating. He informed us that he had called in a consult from a pediatric cardiologist and that he would be there anytime.
It was really late by now. I think it was 2-2:30am. Around 3am, we met Dr. O'Laughlin, Sophia's cardiologist. He explained everything to us in great detail and even drew us diagrams.
But most importantly, he had this really great way of talking to us that somehow made it seem like a workable situation.
He explained to us, that he had done an echocardiogram on Sophia. Which shows not only the anatomy of the heart but also the direction of the blood flow. He told us that the what the neonatalogist, who had suspected the major vessels to the heart were reversed, was incorrect. And that he instead suspected that her pulmonary arteries were not properly moving blood to her lungs to get oxygen. He also explained to us that when babies are still in the womb, they have a small "duct" that allows the blood in the heart to mix. I think this is because the lungs are not necessary in utero because the mother supplies the oxygen to the baby. This patent ductus is usually between the aorta and the pulmonary arteries. Shortly after birth, this ductus closes and the heart functions as it should with no mixing of oxygen rich and oxygen spent blood. He explained to us that because there was no proper connection from the heart to the lungs as this ductus began to close Sophia became "cyanotic" or blue. So, the plan was to give Sophia a medication called prostaglandin that would keep the ductus "patent" or open. And then transfer her to the local children's hospital when possible the next day.
At this point, we called our parents and woke them to explain the situation. We were then allowed to go see Sophia who had been away from us for several hours. I wheeled my wife down the hall in a wheelchair and we had no idea what to expect. And I don't think we could have prepared for what we saw anyway.
Sophia looked completely different than earlier that evening. She was pale and in an oxygen tent. She was breathing very short labored breaths and was on all kinds of flashing and beeping monitors (which we would later become very familiar with). At that point, I think my wife and I both were not sure she would make it through the night. They asked if we would like to hold her and my wife really did. So they affixed an oxygen mask to her and my wife held her and sang to her.
More tomorrow.
-Michael