Ronald McDonald house

This afternoon the 4 of us went to the Ronald McDonald house to spend some time with Ethan before he leaves tomorrow.  Coral, her mom and I went first to see Skye.  She is the same.  There may not be much to report this week, so it could be a few days or sometime later this week before I have anything else to report.

Meanwhile the boys hung out at the house and we stayed some more after we came back from the hospital.

It appears that the original birth weight from Ethan was slightly off, according to the nurses, her birth weight was actually 4 pounds 15 ounces, so that is almost 5 pounds, much better!

Mr. Ronald McDonald at his house!

Ethan and his nephews!

 2 sets of brothers!

Saturday 9/15 update

We got to see Skye again today.  We went to spend some time with Ethan and Coral and to also take Coral to see baby.  Luckily, security at the hospital takes them back and forth from the hospital to the Ronald McDonald house upon request 24 hours a day!  The house is just a few blocks away, but that is still not doable after a c-section, and there is a hill involved!

Skye is still stable and in the acceptable ranges for all the monitors.  Her heart is operating better than it did yesterday.  They do ultrasounds every day or every other day on different areas to check how she is doing as far as the ECMO goes.  They adjusted the ECMO line after seeing that it wasn't quite in the right place, and this made her heart much happier.  I guess it was putting the blood right back to her heart instead of into her body, so now it is putting the blood into her body.

Her intestines are up in the area where one of her lungs is supposed to be.  They think that lung is small, they just don't know how small yet, so please pray that it isn't too small or that it has a chance to get better. I don't know how all that works yet.....

We plan to get together with them again tomorrow afternoon to just hang out at the RM house and we will bring the boys with us because Ethan was wanting to see them since he has only seen them a couple of times! What a good uncle! :)

Unfortunately, Ethan is going back to Montana Monday evening.  He hopes to be able to visit periodically, but work obligations and the money factor are calling. Fortunately, Coral's mom is here to next weekend.

Skye is one sick little girl, so we really need a miracle, but nothing is impossible with God!

Birth Day Pictures!

Today was another stable day for Skye, which is a good thing, nothing to report! And, Coral just got discharged from the hospital this evening so she gets to go see her baby!!!

Here are the pictures I took when visiting for a few minutes before the ECMO was added:

Here are the pictures I took when visiting again in the evening with Ethan.  Ethan is a natural, he went immediately to hold her hand, so sweet! The big red tube attached to her neck is the ECMO line, taking her blood out, cleaning, oxygenating, and sending back so her heart and lungs can rest.

Stable

Today has ended on a good note.  Skye is stable!

I went to see baby today at about 1pm.  I got to see her for about 15 minutes or so and then the ECMO team was ready to start the process.  So, then I went over to UW Hospital to see Coral.  She was still pretty tired and a little groggy, but doing fine.

ECMO is basically a heart/lung bypass machine that lets the heart and lungs rest.  The procedure to put it in took about 2.5 hours the nurse said, and went just fine.

This evening Bill wanted to see Ethan and the baby, so we dropped the kids off at my parents (thank you!!!!) and picked up Ethan and went to see Skye.  While there, the nurse explained a lot of things and even showed us what each of the lines attached to her are for.  There are soooo many tubes/lines/whatever you want to call them in her tiny little body!!  From the big ECMO line in her neck, to oxygen monitors on her kidneys and brain, to blood pressure, feeding, breathing, catheter, and many more!   We then got some dinner with Ethan and went to see Coral.  She seemed to be doing even better this evening.  She said they are going to have her try and walk this evening. She's doing about as best you can expect after having a c-section and not being able to see her baby! :(  She eagerly looked at the pictures I took from my camera.

So, meanwhile there are 2 nurses in her room at all times, the regular nurse and the ECMO nurse.  They basically are monitoring all the things and making recordings.  There is not much touching of baby because they don't really like it at this point, but they do when needed to move her, etc.  This will hopefully stay uneventful for a week or so.  Then they will start "testing" her by diminishing some of the "help" she is getting to see if her body can handle less help.  This will hopefully lead up to a surgery to repair the diaphragm and rearrange her organs at maybe around 2 weeks.

Tomorrow, I'll post the pictures I took today here on the blog.  It's late and I am tired!

Otherwise, I'll post a blog when there is something to say, you can assume that if you don't here from me on here, that everything is stable and no changes to report.

Thanks for all the prayers.  We sure can all feel them.

Aurora Skye Hunter-Phillipson is here

She was born at 2:30am via c-section weighing 4 pounds 4 ounces. At about 1:45 they decided to do a c-section because baby couldn't handle the labor.

At about 5:30am Ethan texted me that she is very sick and going on ECMO, a heart/lung bypass machine and it's not looking good.

It's a go!!!

I am writing this at about 9pm and Coral is in labor!!!!!!

They got to go to the hospital about noon today.  At about 5pm she was getting the petosin medication to start labor.  At about 8pm I asked if she was feeling it yet.  Ethan said that Coral said no, but he could see it in her face.  So, that means contractions are there, just not that bad yet!

This probably will be a long night for them. For me personally when induced with Shaun, it was about 14 hours from first petosin to birth.

I will post an update around 6-7am tomorrow unless I haven't heard anything.  Check my facebook post during the day for brief updates, and then I'll post a detailed blog post here in the evening!

Thanks for all the prayers!!  This is all in God's hands and He knows the big picture.

.....and waiting.....

It's a no go again today.  The hospital is too full.  She will go in for a stress test tomorrow if  they can't get her in then.  It's a waiting game at this point....I'll update again tomorrow!