Team Thad history Day 1 June 5, 2013

DISCLAIMER: This is more of a journal for me than anything, but wanted everyone to be able to keep up with Thad if they wish. First and foremost, thank you for your prayers. While you are praying for us, please make an effort to pray for at least one more baby and family here in the NICU. We are very lucky and very blessed and Thad is doing very well, which is not the case for everyone here. So please say a prayer for another little baby that needs God's healing! I had imagined that by this day, we would be home as a family of five, or at the very least preparing for discharge from our local hospital. I had imagined that we would already have posted hundreds of pictures on Facebook by now! I had imagined that things would be a lot different than they have been. BUT Thad had other ideas! He was ready to have some big adventures before he had even reached his 2nd day of life! The first 24 hours were perfect...my surgery went well, Thad was healthy, eating well, big brother and big sister loved him at first sight, everything was picture perfect. Fast forward to Wednesday early afternoon. Dr. K, our awesome pediatrician, had just stopped by to check him out. She had brought him back to my room and was visiting with us while Thad lay contentedly in his bassinet. I looked down, and he had turned a very ashy gray. Dr. K rushed him into the nursery to check him out. He recovered quickly but she wanted to watch him for a while. After a second episode (known in the medical world as a "desat"--a desaturation of oxygen levels in his blood), she hooked him up to some monitors to keep an eye on him. Through the course of the afternoon, he had a total of 5 desats, a couple of them being very scary in that he quickly turned very gray, and some requiring oxygen for him to return to normal. Dr. K and her group of wonderful, wonderful nurses watched him nonstop while they ran every test they could...chest X-rays, head ultrasound, echocardiogram, blood work up, etc. Everything came back...NORMAL! Which is good, and what we would want to hear, but that didn't give us any idea of why it continued to happen. On the recommendation of Dr. K, we chose to move Thad to another facility with a NICU and specialists and access to even more tests than our awesome team had done already. Within 2 hours, Thad was taking his first ride in an ambulance,followed by his first airplane ride! Wade accompanied our little man while I got an early discharge, packed quickly, tried to explain my quick arrival and departure to G and Z (and why our new baby didn't come home with me!) and was chauffeured by my parents to KC. By the time I arrived at midnight, they had already done a CT scan and were prepping for a lumbar puncture, where they draw spinal fluid to culture it. By the time we got to see him after that, got set up with a room down the hall from his bed, grabbed a quick bite and crashed, it was 3 a.m. After a couple of hours of sleep, we were up and ready to see what a new day brought.