Prayers needed...

I'm home (in Spokane) for a couple of days so, I wanted to give a quick update to let you know where we are right now and we'll fill in the past few days at a later time.

The birth went as good as it could have. We were admitted at 7am on the 23rd and started pitocin around 9am. Every 30 minutes the nurse increased the dose which increased the contractions. When we reached to full dose, Heidi's contractions were every 2 minutes. When the nurse checked Heidi a little after 6pm, she was ready to have Noa. Dr. Hilton was great, he got there right on time and coached us through the birth. Noa was born at 6:27 pm, weighed 6.12 lbs, and was 20.5 inches. Heidi was incredible, natural birth with 3 hard pushes.....

.....Noa and I were Life Flighted to Portland to a hospital more equipped to handle a CDH case as severe as Noa's. The main reason is their experience and use of ECMO. Heidi was on her way driving with Ruby, Emmaus, and Heather before our flight took off. We are staying at a Ronald McDonald house next to the hospital.

Noa was placed on ECMO early Thursday morning followed by dialysis on Friday. Those of you who are on our texting update list are aware of this but I've gotten lots of questions back asking, "what's next if this doesn't work?" So....

This Hospital as very good at keeping babies off of ECMO using other methods of controlling vitals. They use ECMO on the very worst (sickest) cases, for babies who will not survive without it. The reason that ECMO is used as a "last resort" is because it has as many risks and possible side effects as it does benefits. It could save her life or take it. ECMO is total heart and lung bypass with dialysis being kidney bypass, so she's on life support.

Noa will be on ECMO for about two weeks (letting her heart and lungs rest and recover) with tests and constant monitoring to asses her condition. Her heart is very weak and surgery to repair the hernia is not an option untill her heart recovers and is able to oxygenate her blood.

If there's no improvement on ECMO during the two weeks, there's not much chance that there's going to be beyond that, and the question will be,"are we saving her life or prolonging her death?" With so many unknowns we are taking things day to day hoping and praying for the best (even a miracle).

I not sure when the next update will be but we'll try to post news as soon as we can. Thanks for the support and prayers.

JR