The Introduction

As many of you know, Katie and I were blessed with Edward Michael on January 19th, 2011 just a bit earlier than we expected at 25 weeks and weighing in at 1 lb and 12 ounces.  Since his arrival, we have been overwhelmed with the prayers and support of our family and friends and are establishing this blog to keep everyone updated with Edward's progress.

Edward, or Little Eddie, is now 2 weeks and 3 days old and has had absolutely phenomenal care so far in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the University of Virginia.  Overall, he is doing quite well but in his short two weeks, he has already experienced the rollercoaster that is the NICU with ups and downs around every corner.  We plan to use the first few posts to describe the events that brought us to this point, but first we will give a quick rundown to bring everyone up to speed. 

Brief Overview

Katie went into pre-term labor at 24 weeks and 3 days on Saturday, January 15th, 2011.  With bedrest and magnesium, we were able to delay delivery for a little over 72 hours during which Katie was able to receive crucial doses of steroids to aid in Edward's lung development.  However, Edward had made his mind up that he wanted to meet his parents early and he was delivered via emergency ceasarean section at 12:43 AM on January 19th.

The NICU team was right there with us in the operating room and promptly took charge of Edward's care the moment he was out of the womb.  He was immediately intubated and started on broad spectrum antibiotics to protect him from potentially life-threatening infections.  His first week was relatively uneventful which is exactly for what we were praying.  His second week was a little bit more 'active' with both positive steps forward and the occasional step backward.  He remains intubated on the ventilator and is finishing up is second course of antibiotics.  They started feeds about 5 days ago and so far he is tolerating them beautifully.   As we move forward, we hope that he will be able to be extubated soon and will continue to tolerate the feeds and gain weight by the day.

We also want to say thank you to all of our family and friends for their tremendous support and their many prayers so far.  We could not have gotten to this point without each of you and are truly grateful. 

Michael + Katie + Edward