Ethan is going to be 1 month next week...yes 1 MONTH! I am a little behind on starting this website so let me just sum up what the last 30 days have been like. After a weekend of contractions that would NOT STOP...Ethan Hunter was born on June 15th at 28 weeks and 5 days and weighed 3lbs 8oz 16 1/4 inches long. (pretty big baby for a 28 weeker) He was taken straight to the NICU.
The first week of his life he had some problems with his lungs because they were premature. He had a leak in his lung so they had to put a chest tube in to take out the air that was leaking so his little lung could heal. After a week they were finally able to take that out. Next step was to start weaning him of the ventilator. On July 3rd he was finally off! Spent 24 hours on the CPAP and then moved to the nasal canula ( as seen in the pictures above).
During the first few weeks they noticed that he has some fluid on his brain. They watched it for about two weeks but on Monday July 5th they realized that they needed to do something soon for him so they moved him to Millers Children Hospital in Long Beach who has an awesome Neurosurgeon who can monitor him and who would be able to tell us what the next steps were. It turns out surgery was the next step. On July 8th we walked on the side of our little man as they wheeled him to the OR. He went into surgery to have a reservoir put in his head so they can start draining the fluid that was putting pressure on his brain. The surgery went well and he spent the rest of the day sleeping. Our goal is to buy enough time for his brain to start absorbing the spinal fluid so he can avoid having another surgery (to put a shunt in). His surgeon will see him every other day to pull the fluid out until hopefully there is less and less fluid being taken out. Praying this fixes itself!
This might be alot to take in or I might have confused you...but to be honest it took me two weeks to even start understanding what was going on. But I swear I think I can become a NICU nurse now!
We seriously have the best group of doctors and nurses. We are so blessed to have so many people looking out for Ethan and for us. Doctors who are not even in his part of the hospital comes to check on him, nurses fight to be his nurse. This little one has something truly special with him...something everyone sees.
Brayden is already in love with his little brother. He asks about him everyday and he goes up to his picture that we have in the house and kisses it daily. We are so lucky to have these boys in our lives.
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