Alex

It all started on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 at 12:17 am. Our third son Alex was born, a happy, healthy (so we thought) baby boy 8 lbs 14.3 oz. and 21" long. But I knew something was wrong from the start. He wouldn't cry. I asked the nurse why he was not crying and all they said was, "sometimes babies don't cry when they are born." I though it was really odd.

A few hours later our doctor came in to my room and said that something is wrong with the baby, something respiratory but was not sure what. Later they told me he had pneumonia. First they had him hooked up to oxygen through a nasal cannula, then a bubble, and finally a ventilator. His oxygen saturation kept dropping. After being on the vent for 12 hours the neonatologist decided he needed to be sent to a children's hospital. Alex's oxygen saturations by then where in the 50s. He was air evac'd when 26 hours old.

My husband and I had to make the two hour drive the the hospital and by the time we reached the hospital they were waiting on our arrival to perform emergency open heart surgery.

Alex was diagnosed with Infracardiac Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return, Atrial Septal Defect and Patent Ductus Arteriosus. They performed open heart surgery on our 1 day old son for 8 hours. Nine hours later they had to do open heart surgery again for another 7 hours to repair a problem. After his second surgery he was put on ECMO for 4 days. During his recovery we suffered a collapsed lung, severe weight lose do to pyloric stenosis and a e-coli infection in his blood. Forty Days later we finally got to bring him home for the first time.

Today his heart is doing very well. But he suffers from asthma, a hiatal hernia, and GERD. The only complication we would ever have to worry about is if he gets a blockage do to the scar tissue in his heart. We visit the cardiologist just once a year, and so far so good.