NeilRubenstein

Well the last few weeks have been a whirlwind to say the least. Our son was born on September 10 at 3:59 pm. However, he almost wasn’t delivered on that day due to a whole lot of miscommunication resulting in a tremendous amount of unnecessary drama. But that‘s another post for another day.

The bottom line is that Brody Asher was born weighing in at 7 lbs 8 oz and 19.5 inches. Unfortunately they hard to put my wife under general anesthetic, so I couldn’t be in the room when he was delivered. But I am told that Brody let out a little cry when he was born. So did my first son, but it is very common for CDH kids to not have enough lung capacity to be able to cry when born.

Brody was only allowed to cry for a split second before the neonatal doctors in the operating room intubated him in order to provide oxygen and respirator support. Without knowing how developed his lungs are, the doctors don’t want to take any chances.

As my wife was starting to become coherent after surgery, the doctors finally wheeled Brody into the recovery room for my wife and I to see him for the first time. It was a little hard to see what he looked like with all the tubes helping him breathe, but we thought he looked a lot like our first son.

After an hour, Brody was transferred to the Children’s Hospital, so he could be further monitored. At this point, we didn’t really know how severe his diaphragmatic hernia really was or if he had any other abnormalities or issues that would ultimately complicate and make his fight for survival that much harder. We knew that the accepted survival rate was only 50%, but we didn’t know much more.

The goal over the next couple of days would be to just stabilize Brody before ultimately scheduling his hernia diaphragmatic hernia repair. We’ve been down this road before with our first son, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Aidan is a blessing and is doing amazing, but that does not guarantee Brody will follow in his footsteps. However, Brody was doing so well that his surgeon (the same one Aidan had) decided to do his hernia repair when he was 3 days old. This is not just a umbilical hernia repair but major, major surgery.

It turns out all of Brody’s organs except for his liver and stomach had passed through his diaphragmatic hernia into his chest causing stress on his lungs and preventing them from developing properly. So the surgeon didn’t just have to patch the hernia in his diaphragm with a piece of Gortex, but she also had to move most of his organs back to their proper place in his abdomen. She also created a second abdominal hernia in his stomach wall. She uses this to give his organs extra space to grow and develop once back in the abdominal area. Brody (just like Aidan) will need a second surgery around 12 months old to close up this doctor made hernia.

So now the real fight begins. Brody has to start the process of learning to breathe on his own, eat without the help of a feeding tube, be weaned off of pain killers and Oxygen support…basically he has he learn how to be a newborn.