My Amazing Journey part 8

 As I mentioned about Lynn being able to hold Sawyer. Well he was all bundled up in a blanket that first time. A couple days later she was able to "kangaroo" with him. This is skin on skin. The great thing about this method is the child feels the security of the mother. The warmth and the love that goes with it. As over stimulated as Sawyer was, his heart rate would drop to a nice calming beat. It really is pretty remarkable.

 Lynn was always looking forward to that day, the doctors were being very cautious.Sawyer would start the day off good, but when Lynn would go for a visit after work he was just too wore out to attempt it. Then after a bad day of work and knowing that she still wouldn't be able to hold him, she went to the hospital and the doctor changed his mind that she could hold him that night. It was as if God said, "child, you have been through enough. Enjoy this moment."

 Here Sawyer was 9 days old and still not even close to being able to breath on his own. He had a few episodes where stopped breathing altogether. It was very stressful and our worry meter was at an alltime high. But he was a fighter and would always come back to us. The only thing that would relieve the stress was when we were able to kangaroo with him. It seemed to flush all the worry away. Very, very powerful feeling!! God just gives us these emotions that can be really incredible.

 I was always so amazed at how they could pick and insert these tubes for his antibiotics. He also has battle scars on his body from those days, badges of honor you could say. His skin was paper thin and transparent. He ripped one of his pads off and took the skin with it. That scar will never heal we were told. So we will always have that reminder of his will to survive.

 Then we had a critical moment. Sawyer developed a heart murmur. There is a valve in the heart that is supposed to close when the baby enters into the world. It is open so the baby can breath inside the mothers womb. Well Sawyer's valve was mildly open. To close the valve they had to give him iodine treatments. You can only give up to 3 treatments otherwise if that didn't work he would have had to have open heart surgery. A surgery that they couldn't preform at that hospital. So they would have had to helicopter him to Milwaukee which was 120 miles away. It was administered every 12 hours, there was no feeding inbetween as it disrupts the procedure. So he would have had to go 36 hours without feeding if it went to the third dose. And thats exactly what happened. It took the third dose for the valve to close. Sawyer always liked to keep us on edge!! (And so does our wonderful Father)