Step Down

We are officially blogging from the cardiac step down unit! Yeah! We were able to start holding Stockton again on Wednesday. It was so nice to hold our baby after a long week of just looking at him. I can't believe things are moving so fast. They took us to the step down unit yesterday and it is so nice to stay with him during the night. The past 2 weeks we have been staying at the Ronald McDonald House which has been such a blessing. The doctors are still worried about his kidney function. Usually, they like to see kidney function post heart surgery at 50-60%. Stockton's kidneys are only working about 25% but seem to be doing better everyday. Stockton seems to have his nights and days mixed up. Our first night with him left me exhausted and I didn't sleep hardly at all. He is still getting continuous tube feedings but I got to feed him a bottle today for the first time. The occupational therapists are trying to build his mouth muscles because he has never received anything by mouth. He is doing such a great job and they are really impressed. Bottle feeding is our only obstacle from going home. I can't believe it. I am so scared to bring him home. Sometimes I get really frustrated with the way they do things at the hospital. I have really started to speak up about how I want things done. I get really irritated when they don't cluster their activities. Just this morning Stockton had a EKG, a echocardiagram, an x-ray, 2 doctors visits, a PICC line specialist visit, occupational therapy, a bath and a few other things. From 4am until about 9:30am he was bugged every half hour and it was getting really irritating. I finally told them that they needed to start clustering stuff because it really pissed me off that they would wake him up every time he had just fallen asleep. You can't forget that the nurse is taking his vitals every four hours and random alarms are going off. I think I got a little short with people today but I don't care. Another thing I mentioned to them was about some adhesive remover. Sometimes the staff will just take off his leads that are stuck to his skin without using the adhesive remover. HELLO! Obviously he is crying and it hurts him. That drives me crazy! All of his tests he took today came back normal and the doctors are really pleased. Dr. McKenzie came by today and he said Stockton looks great. I love Dr. McKenzie. He is truly a miracle worker. Well, that is all for now. We just want our little guy to start gaining some weight!

Why the name Stockton?

Well, I am asking myself the same question. I think that boy names are rather hard to come up with. To be honest I like more traditional names like Zachary, Steven or Benjamin. I also pondered the names Ryker and Mason. Before Seth and I ever got married I would tease him that he would probably name his child Michael Jordan, John Stockton or even Karl Malone. During this pregnancy we joked a lot about calling the baby Sloan (after Coach Sloan) and we started to joke about calling him Stockton. There was no way I would ever give into that, right? I took a trip to Utah and I joked with family and friends about the name. The name kind of started to stick and that is what I started calling him when he was in my belly. Seth actually became a little hesitant and we both became rather unsure of what to call our baby boy. Well, when I went into labor Seth put up a few names on the dry erase board. Stockton just seemed to be his name.When Stockton was born he wasn't a Steven or a Zachary, he was our baby Stockton. Who would have thought that I would name my son after my husband's favorite NBA player? Not me, that's for sure. Seth is overjoyed about our son's name and I am happy that he is happy.

Tuesday, August 9th

Stockton seriously is a little trooper. Our little champ was taken off dialysis yesterday and they removed the tubes out of his stomach. They also removed his urinary catheter. YEAH!!! He no longer has any tubes! He did really well on the high flow oxygen yesterday so he is on a normal nasal cannula now. He also had his first feeding today! He will eat through a nasogastric tube until they feel he can eat orally. I got to change his diaper today. We are so happy. Love you Stockton!

Monday, August 8th

Today Stockton is doing rather well. Like before we are taking a few steps forward and a couple steps back. Stockton is stable and wakes up whenever he wants to. He is off of dialysis and his kidneys are perfusing very well. He finally had his umbilical line taken out today and we are so happy. They have told us since last Thursday that it would be taken out. Stockton has had some problems with tachycardia. His heart rate shoots up to 180 or so for just a minute then comes back down. His blood pressure has also been borderline high but they have been giving him some medicine to keep it down. The cardiologists met today and decided that Stockton would be put on Propanolol to keep his heart rate and blood pressure down. Unfortunately, this medication he will need to be on until his next surgery in a few months. They placed a nasogastric tube in him today so that they could administer the Propanolol. It is kind of sad to think about because that medicine is the first thing that his stomach has had in it. They also said that he may be able to start feedings tomorrow! Stockton has been doing really well on the CPAP machine and we are going to try the high flow cannula again tonight. We pray and hope that he can go to a normal cannula tomorrow. He really hates the huge prongs up his nose. They were also able to take an IV out of his foot. We are so blessed to take these few steps forward but we still have a long road ahead of us. Please pray for him and keep him in your thoughts. I truly think we all gain strength through positive thinking.

PICTURES!

Probably a picture of me in between contractions.

Life is easy!

Welcome to the world tough guy.

Daddy got to change the first diaper.

The first time I got to really hold our son.

Seth's first time holding Stockton!

We love you little guy!

*Due to the content of his post surgical pictures I don't feel comfortable posting them. If you weren't truly prepared to see them then you would be overwhelmed.

Introducing Stockton Seth Watson!

My Labor
Mr. Stockton was scheduled to come into the world on August 1, 2011. We felt comfortable having my mother fly in on the 29th. I was even a little hesitant to have her come 2 days early because I didn't want to waste her time. Luckily, she was here! Around 9:00pm on the 29th I was having some minor contractions. They were pretty consistent so we decided to go to the hospital. Under our circumstances I wasn't sure how fast I would go into full labor so we drove 40 minutes to St. Luke's. Once again they said I was 1-2cm dilated. I was so worried that he would come and we wouldn't have time to get to the hospital. They sent us home and I didn't have any contractions on the way home. Once we walked into the house I ate a little food and I took a little shower. We got home around 12:30am so we were really tired. That night there happened to be a bull frog outside of our window. It was so loud. It kept me up and my contractions started again. I did not sleep one bit and my contractions were every 15 minutes. I did not want to wake Seth because he was so tired. I took a bath and they seemed to calm down but once I got out they started again. I went to lay down in bed because I was just so exhausted. I just closed my eyes but then a contraction would come. I got up and decided to just get ready for the day at 5am. Seth woke up around 8am and my contractions began to come a little more frequent. Once Seth was done getting ready I told my Mom that I guarantee this baby will be born by 4pm today. My contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and I told Seth that we had to go once again. We got to St. Luke's about 9:30am I was dilated to 6 centimeters. They admitted me and they asked if I wanted an epidural. In Texas they have to check your blood before you get an epidural. The anesthesiologist decided that he would just give it to me early. I was so thankful. The epidural started to work and I could feel my legs getting a little numb. By this time it was about 11:30am and I was just waiting to be completely dilated. Dr. Kirshon, my OB/GYN, was not on call so one of his associates was called to deliver me. Around 1:30pm I started to feel my contractions come back. I called the nurse and the nurse anesthetist came and gave me more pain medication. He told me to call him in 30 minutes if it didn't work. Well, I continued to feel my contractions very strongly because they added a little pitocin to my IV. He gave me another narcotic and another medication through my epidural. He told me that this was the most he could give me in this time frame. The pain did not stop so they stopped the pitocin. They did a few tests on my body to see where the epidural was working. I could not feel hot/cold on my legs, arms or chest. I could feel my contractions and all of the pain down below. I have to tell you that this was excruciating. I seriously thought I was going to die. They told me that my body created a "wall" against the epidural and it just wouldn't work. I was so scared that I couldn't do this naturally. Around 2:30pm I could feel the urge to push. The doctor was no where around and she was not even in the building! Can you believe it? I literally can't remember what I was saying but I remember yelling and screaming at all the people in the room. I could laugh about it now but I was telling everyone to "be quiet" or "shut up." Around 2:50pm the urge to push just became so strong. We were all just waiting for the doctor to come and I kept telling them time after time that I had to push. I couldn't wait any longer. The nurse let me begin to push and the doctor came in, FINALLY! Stockton was so low that I only pushed for 5 minutes and he was out! Relief! They let me hold him for just a couple seconds and they brought him out of the room. He was beautiful, he took my breathe away. He is amazing. We just love him. They immediately put two umbilical lines in so they could start with his prostaglandin (PGE). After they were done getting him all set up they told us he was 7.7 pounds and 19 1/2 inches long. They brought him back to me in an incubator and he was so calm. He just looked at me for what seemed like forever. They quickly took him and Seth up to the cardiovascular ICU at Texas Children's Hospital. I was able to see him a few hours later and he is so beautiful. We are so grateful that he is finally here and we can share these precious moments with him. We love having a son and we are over joyed that he is doing well. We love you baby Stockton!

Post Op Day 5

Tomorrow I am planning on updating this blog in detail. Today we are going to spend some time with our daughter and I am thinking about sleeping at home to catch up on my sleep. Last night we went to dinner and came back around 10:00pm. Stockton's oxygen levels were starting to head into the mid 70's so they tried to reposition him to see what was going on. Stockton became really agitated and his oxygen levels dropped to the high 40's. This was very scary because his lips and body started to turn purple. The respiratory therapist put him on high flow oxygen and they used the ambu bag to bring him back to the 90's. With Stockton's heart condition a normal oxygen saturation should be around 85. Stockton responded very well to the oxygen until early morning. The doctors put him on a CPAP machine and that is where he is today. They did an x-ray of his lungs and noticed some fluid build up around his lungs and they also discovered that his left lower lung lobe had collapsed. Since they discovered this they have turned him and the fluid and lung have since re-expanded. We were supposed to start nasogastric tube feedings today but we have been set back. Our goal is to get him back to the nasal cannula and far away from being intubated. Ugh! This is truly a roller coaster. All of this is up to Stockton and up to his precious body. We continue to pray for him and we hope we are headed in the right direction again.