5/25 The big day, SURGERY

Stephen had surgery today, Wednesday 5/25 at 9:30am. He was in surgery for about 2 hours. The longest 2 hours of my life so far...Dr.Kawaguchi his surgeon came out after the procedure to explain what she did, and how severe the defect was. There was actually more organs up in his chest than we initially thought.his stomach, small intestine, spleen and part of his colon was up in his chest. The reason it was not as bad or problematic in the beginning like most CDH babies is because for some reason Stephen had a "protective sac" that did not allow those organs to move completely or more up into the chest cavity. Instead of using the gore tex patch like most cases they were able to use stitches and stitch it up and had to stitch an area around his ribs as well..He also surprisingly to the surgeons has 2 parts to the left lung. Usually with CDH they only have 1 part of the defective lung. The doctors and surgeons are very optimistic for Stephen's recovery as so are we. I always had the feeling that our beautiful baby would be okay, but there is always that unsettling lingering feeling in the back of your thoughts...

When Stephen came out of surgery he was very sedated and looked great. He had a basketball and football gauze patch covering his incision. He was very sedated so he had no pain and seemed to be resting comfortably. His vitals, blood gases, and assessments were all really good and towards the end of the day and in the middle of the night is when they started to hear good sounds coming form his bowels.