March 6, 2011 - 2 Days Old

Today is Sunday. I had planned on just attending sacrament meeting at the hospital, but Amaraa asked me to go to our ward and bear my testimony in fast and testimony meeting, and thank everyone who has been fasting and praying for us. We really feel like the fasting and prayers of our family and friends has been a key factor in the progress that has been made so far. Amaraa feels like it has saved her life.

After blubbering all over the pulpit in church, I headed down to the hospital. I went straight up to the NICU to check on Aiden. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was that his Dopamine pump had been shut off. Dopamine is one of the drugs they were giving him for his heart. I asked the nurse about it and she said they had weaned him of it this morning and that they were in the process of weaning him off the second heart medication.

I was able to touch Aiden and hold his hand for the first time today. I couldn't believe how small his little hands were. His whole hand was about the size of my thumbnail. He doesn't seem quite that small just looking at him. He grabbed onto my finger and held onto it for a while -- our first father-son bonding moment. The neonatologist came and talked to me when he returned from lunch and told me that Aiden's heart was looking much better. He did another ultrasound on the heart while I was there. Even to my untrained eye, it was easy to see that it had improved. Based on the ultrasound, he told the nurse to decrease the other heart medication to half, and to stop it altogether in an hour. He also said that they were weaning him off the ventilator and that they had decreased the oxygen to the lowest setting on the machine. He anticipated that they would pull the breathing tube out tonight or tomorrow.

I left the NICU and went to see Amaraa in the ICU. She looked great. They had pulled out the IV in her leg and Dr. Anderson had been in earlier to remove the dressing on her wound. That was very painful for Amaraa, but she was grateful to get it off because it was causing a lot of her pain. When I arrived, she asked me if I wanted to see her incision. I was expecting blood and gore, but it looked very good. I felt much better about things after I saw it. They even let her eat a little bit today. The nurse brought her a strawberry shake and it tasted really good to her. Last night she didn't sleep very well, so she was pretty tired today. She said that every time she closed her eyes, she would have crazy dreams that were brought on by the medication.

Shortly after I got there, the nurse came in and said that they were going to take Amaraa up to see the baby today. They were just going to roll the bed up to the NICU. At about 3:00 we got everything ready and headed up there. What a neat thing to watch as Amaraa saw Aiden in person for the first time! She cried her eyeballs out as she touched his little foot and held his hand. It was a special moment. She kept saying that she didn't think she would ever get to see him after all of the problems she had in pregnancy. She started to bleed at 10 weeks. Making it to 30 weeks was a miracle! The last several weeks she was just praying and hoping and living for him. All of a sudden, she woke up in the ICU and he wasn't in her belly anymore and she couldn't see him. It was a surreal and overwhelming experience to actually get to see him lying there, a healthy baby. She is excited for them to remove his breathing tube so that she can hold him. She was physically and emotionally exhausted when her visit was over.

We took her back to her room and she rested for a while. She keeps improving every day. Thank you all for your support and prayers.