Busy, busy, busy!

Well, since my last post things have been kinda crazy! Ryder my 9 month old baby had his open heart surgery May 18 and came through it like the tough little champ we all knew he is!! He was in the hospital for 4 days after surgery then got to come home. Since then he's had his 2 week checkup with the docs at the ACH cardiology clinic and after a complete work up they gave him the thumbs up!! His heart looks and sounds great, His pulmonary (?) valve leaks a little bit, but they said if it leaks like that for the rest of his life it won't hurt him. They're still going to keep an eye on the valve as he gets older but they don't foresee any issues. He should be a normal happy healthy little boy, thank you God! We were SO relieved to get the good news at his checkup :). Kolton my big 6 year old tball player is doing great and enjoying his summer so far. His tball team is undefeated so far!! We had a little bit of sadness, his new pet guinea pig Cooper died after just 2 weeks :( we buried him in a baby wipe box in the front yard and said some nice words, Kolton has since recovered and is saying he wants a rat next (YUCK). Other than being really busy we've all had a good summer so far. Until next time g'nite everybody!

Some background info

Before I start posting normal day to day blogs, I thought I'd do a little background info first. First off, why I decided to start blogging, I've had ALOT going in in my life right now (more on that in a little bit) and I thought it might help to get it all down on "paper". I've never been very good at handling difficulties in a healthy way, I usually just bottle things up and never deal with it until I absolutely have to. Lets see, I guess I should start 7 years ago, in May 2005 I moved out on my own and graduated high school in that order. In June 2005 I met the man I would soon marry, in July 2005 we got married, nine months to the day later we had our first son 7 lb 12.4 oz 19 in long; he was beautiful and perfect. My husband and I have had our ups and downs but almost 7 years together and we're going strong. In February 2011 we found out we were expecting again, we were SO excited! We soon found out it was another boy (!!) We were all three excited. My due date was October 20, 2011, but my water broke when I was 31 weeks along and I had to be taken to University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), I was there for 9 days getting antibiotics, steroids, and lots of other medicines to help keep me healthy and to get the baby as ready as he could be for an early delivery. The dr.'s were hoping I would make it to 34 weeks but the baby had other ideas. At 32 weeks he decided it was time to make a grand and dramatic entrance into the world. And boy was it! He was breech, they couldn't find his heartbeat for a few minutes because he had dropped so far down, they finally found his heartbeat and also found he was about to try and come out rear-end first. They rushed me to surgery for an emergency ceserean section, put me to sleep, and when I woke up I was in recovery in quite a bit of pain. As soon as I woke up they told me that he was ok, he had to be put on a ventilator because he needed a little help breathing, but he was doing pretty good. He weighed 3lb 7oz and was 15.9 in long, they brought him to see me in his incubator, in my eyes, even with all his tubes and wires, when he looked at me with those big blue eyes he was beautiful and perfect. That was almost nine months ago, he spent 7 weeks in UAMS in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) they found a hole in his heart between the top two chambers (Perforated Foramen Ovale or PFO) he's got a heart murmur, when we took him for a check-up with the cardiologist at Arkansas Childrens Hospital in March 2012 they found stenosis (narrowing) of his pulmonary artery that only open heart surgery will fix. So that's what we're facing now, a 7-10 day stay in Little Rock at ACH, being torn between both of our sons that we love more than life itself. I'm tearing up typing this because it breaks my heart to have to leave one son to be with another. I hate having to split them up because my boys light up whenever they see each other. Its going to be hard on all of us until we can get this surgery behind us and my baby on the mend. My future blogs shouldn't be quite this lenghty, but I felt it was necessary to play catch-up, so that my future ramblings might make sense. So until next time, live well and prosper everybody.