Karsie's out of Surgery

Kevin was able to see Karsie about a half hour after surgery and for the time being she is stable. She has been through so much trauma in the past 6 hrs or so that it's a miacle she's still alive. We will explain more about that tomorrow, but for now we need our rest. We have some pictures soon to come too, but not for the faint of heart.

surgical update

A hospital socialworker who is a helper for Michelle and me said one of her jobs is to update us on Karsie's progress, so she did that. It sounds like things are going okay in surgery. No excitement. We are hoping to have a full update in the next hour or so.

The Story

In case the last post was a bit cryptic, here's the story: when karsie was born her omphalocele sac ruptured and tore from the umbilical cord which craeted lots of blood loss that they were not able to stop. When we spread the word we had just been told that and that her survival was not likely.

Michelle and I at that point seriously prepared for the news that we had lost our daughter.

The doctors came back and told us that they were able to get her stable enough to transfer to childrens hospital and they were able to somehat stablize her to go into surgery. She is currently there and will be four a couple hours, but she is still very very sick. She lost a lot of blood and was without it to the brain for long enough time to be scary.

We are still in a very bad situation, but we continue to hope and pray. Michelle is doing well after her own surgery.

update

They have moved karsie's status from survival unlikely to stablizing. We are no where near out of the woods but it looks slightly better. In a bit of a dead zone now but we will post more info when there's time.

Delay...we will go in around 3:30. Waiting for the correct OR to be booked

We're Going In!

Happy Birthday Karsie:  July 17, 2009

Lungs are Mature!

They test in many different levels and only the highest set bar will show up this early that the lungs are mature.  

Translation:  The lungs are VERY mature!  We are a bit on cloud nine right now.  We're waiting for the doctor to see if we're going in soon.   

Update

We are very happy with the current plan that has been put into place by Dr. Dowling.  He came in and said that we basically have 3 options:

1.  Delivery - he was a bit tentative doing this because we do not yet know about the lungs and we definitely don't want another issue for Karsie to deal with other than the omphalocele.  If she was in active/stressful labor then this is the only option, but since she has calmed down then he said we might want to find out a few more things.

2.  Amniocentesis - This is the option that he prefers and so do we.  He is going to take some fluid out of the sac and test the lung maturity.  If she has mature lungs we will deliver today.  If she does not, then we will probably wait until we can't wait any more.  If they are not we will then wait until next week if we can (because that's when they can do another amnio) and they may be mature then (which will signal delivery).

3.  Wait - This is not anyone's optimal choice, but this was an option.  Not going to happen.

We are now going to have an amnio and will probably find out the results in 3-4 hours.  Sorry for the continued delay, but this will be so much less stressful to know that she has full maturity if we have to deliver today....we'll keep you posted.

Waiting.....

So the plan at this point was to give you some information a few hours ago.  Not so.  The doctor has not come in to talk to us yet and at this point we have a new doctor, but still aware of our situation.

Michelle's contractions slowed down considerably last night which makes us wonder if they will try to push it.  However, the medicine that is keeping Michelle's uterus happy is making Michelle not so happy.  We are fairly certain (without any console yet) that even if they decide to push it, it won't be too terribly long.  Michelle has moved from about a 3cm cervix on Wed. to being 1 cm dilated this morning.  While this can be a very slow process for most pregnancies, we are not wanting to get to that point.  We'll keep you posted when we find things out.

(While I was typing this the nurse came in and said our doc is on his way, and he wanted to make sure Michelle was not having any liquids, so it sounds like he's planning on a c-section to us...but we'll find out for sure soon).