Christmas Eve

Our first Christmas Eve in our own house was very fun, we started the morning off by going to have breakfast at a local diner.  And, then off to see Santa before his round the world flight.  Sam did all the talking for his siblings.

It poured here all day, so we spent the most of our time indoors by the fire.  Nana has been with us, and she and I made a last minute trip out to the stores to pick up a few things.  It was surprisingly quiet, I guess because of all the rain and wind.  That night, we went to the children's mass at church.  Annarose wore the same Christmas dress I wore when I was two.  They had a live nativity, and we got a seat almost right in front.

We headed home and had a light dinner before tucking the kids in for a "long winter's nap"...

Best shot I could get of all three seeing Santa... AR was not thrilled.

Sam telling Santa all about his baby brother

My three little sugar plums

Christmas Eve family picture

Nana and our three... Luke was not so sure about Annarose holding him!

Rosie trying on her and Luke's stockings

Welcome Luke Taylor Fielden

Welcome to our sweet, little warrior!

Luke Taylor Fielden was born by c-section on November 14th at 8:53am.

He weighed in at 6lbs 10oz and 19 inches long.  He is my biggest baby!

A totally different looking child than the other two, brown hair and olive skin just like is Daddy.  It was love at first sight for all of us!

My little heavy weight

Luke is getting ready to be transferred to Brenner's Children's Hospital, Cody wheeled my hospital bed into the nursery so I could hold him before he was taken.  I look calm, but I am really trying to figure out how the hell I am gonna get out of there to be with my baby.

Our first good look at each other

Over the course of the next few hours after Luke was born, we learned that he had a birth defect called Esophageal Atresia with a Tracheoesophageal Fistula.  Basically, his esophagus was improperly formed, making it impossible for him to swallow food or even saliva.  The esophagus was formed in two parts.  The top portion formed a blind pouch and the bottom portion had a "fistula" connected to the trachea.  There are several different classes of EA-TEF... and it is often associated with other birth defects as well.  We had no idea of how severe his condition would turn out to be, Luke was immediately transferred to Brenner's Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem to be evaluated for surgery.  Two days later, while I went crazy in the hospital in High Point... Cody was on the war path to find out everything there was to know about EA-TEF, God bless him because if I knew a quarter of what he knew at the time while tests were being run on Luke I think I would have been in a complete panic.  It could have been bad, really, really bad.  Fortunately, Luke had the "best case scenario" for this defect and had a successful surgery two days after his birthday.

The week following Luke's surgery was pure hell.  It is your worst nightmare as a parent coming true right in front of your face.  All kinds of things went wrong, he went into respiratory failure, and then renal failure.  Followed by a huge production with his heart that had him on several different blood pressure medications, it took Luke a solid week to begin to come around.

Every nurse and doctor were pure angels.  I never felt so at ease as when they were at our bedside helping us through this nightmare.  They never sugar coated things, they spoke matter of fact with the utmost empathy.  One of his lead nurses, actually started to shed a few tears with me.

Luke spent 20 days in the NICU.  I spent 18 of them at his side.  At night I went to the Ronald McDonald house to sleep.  If your ever wondering if that is a worth while cause to support, have no doubt it is a shelter in the terrible storm for every parent going through treatment of a sick child, they give you a beautiful, clean room for you and your entire family plus unlimited food for little or no cost per night.  Although it was a hard day when we checked in, and I cried like a baby, I don't know what Cody and I would have done if not for that place, probably slept in the waiting room.

The most important thing now, is he is going to be fine.  He has a few unknown ahead of him... but after going through so much already, I know my little warrior can do anything.  This kid is destined for great things, I just know it.

My little Luke at just a bit under 1 month

Our last night of normal for awhile...

It has been ages since I posted, so much has happened I don't even know where to begin.  Our little guy was born and an unexpected journey down a long and crazy road came our way.  I will save all that for my next post.  In the mean time, here I am the night before I went into the hospital, 39 weeks and a few days.   I felt good overall, just ready to be comfortable again.  Those last weeks of pregnancy are plain torture, my ribs and back had enough.

Our little family of four posing together, the kids were very excited to meet their little brother.  I was scheduled to be in the O.R. at 7:30am.  Cody and I had a last night out for awhile, and ate a wonderful dinner at Blue Water and then went to see the James Bond movie after we put the kiddos to bed.  We got home, took showers and set the alarm.  At least we thought we did, we ended up forgetting to turn the alarm on.  I woke up at 6:30am and we were supposed to be checking in at the hospital at 6:45.  OOPS!  I should have known then that our day was going to go in a totally different direction then we expected.