Saturday

We just found out that Jac will be dischaged today!!! He had some x-rays this morning and about 6 doctors came in and told us that he is doing great and the only reason he would stay here would be to give him oxygen. So they decided that they'll just send us home and give us the pain killers and oxygen that he needs. We are so excited! It is a lot earlier than we thought we would be able to come home. We had pretty much set our minds to coming home on monday or tuesday, so this was all a shock to us.

Thank you everyone for your care and support over the last few days! We love all of you!

Allison, one of our fabulous nurses.


Jess, our tech is great at baths!


Jess and I go way back. Me (Lacie) and Jess were members of the 29th ward way back when. What a small world! She and Allison were great, they spoiled us a little.


Today was a good day. The Doctor removed Jac's chest tube and Pacer wires. He went on a wagon ride and has been awake most of the day. He threw up his Lortab, but I don't blame him, it's gross tasting.
Jac has been such a sweetheart through everything. He cries a little, but is easily calmed by impromptu performences of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

More fun pictures!!

Getting an ECHO to see how everything is holding up.


The caravan down to Cardiology for the ECHO





The first time Dad got to hold him.




Chillin' in the wagon.

Friday

Getting ready for a wagon ride from Dad


Just relaxing


Having some carrots


Get well wishes.


Having some apple juice. We are trying to loosen up his bowels ;)
Lortab and morphine...it's good

Heres a quick video of Jac. He's doing great and is getting more awake all the time. More updates later!

Update

Jac is doing so good. Thank you all for your prayers and support. He ate so much today. Three containers of baby food and 2ounces of milk and 2 ounces of juice, just from 7am to 10am!!! He has been nursing and taking bottles of juice and milk all day. I am so excited for him to gain some baby chub, not to much, but enough to look like a baby instead of a little boy, at least while he still is a baby ;)
Tomorrow he will have X-rays and hopefully they will remove his chest tube. We are also hoping to get him to where he won't need the oxygen tube in his nose anymore. He hates it so much. They had to tape the tube to his cheeks because he tries to pull it off every chance he gets. We have to keeps socks on his hands because he tries to pull not only his oxygen tubes out but also his I.V., his pacer wires and he has even grabbed ahold of his chest tube. He will be so happy to not have things attached to him anymore.

New News!

We just heard that Jac is doing great. He had a bit of a hard night and was up most of it trying to pull out all of his wires. Here's a few pictures of him from last night showing all of the wires and tubes hooked into him. It was kindof hard to see him like this but he was doing great and slept most of the time that we were with him.










So this morning we let him have some time alone to just rest and get better and we went home to shower and get some rest ourselves. You don't realize how tired you are until you actually get a chance to rest. And well we ended up sleeping over an hour longer than we wanted to.

When we got here he was awake but really groggy and upset so they gave him some drugs and we let him sleep longer. He is healing so fast! They say he will be moved to his own room as soon as they can find one for him. Lacie is actually holding him right now. She got to nurse him for the first time in a couple days and it seemed like it was a huge relief to him.

We jsut heard that he will be in room 3086.

Dr. Hawkins


Waiting a long time for surgery. He is hungry and tired.





This is the cloth that his patch was cut from. Considering how small his little heart is this is a big patch!!

In the waiting room, he finally drifted off to sleep.

We blew bubbles to try and keep him distracted in the waiting room.

So the pictures are a little out of order, but you get the general idea.

The Surgery is Done!!!

His hospital pj's are a little big


He is trying to eat my necklace he is so hungry
This is us in front of the murial in the waiting room.



Ready to go for surgery!!!




X-ray's...not torture!!





My poor little guy





So Doctor Hawkins (the Surgeon) just came in and told us the surgery is over and that everything went great. He said that Jac had a large hole in his heart. He also said that he repaired a second hole in the upper chamber that wasn't as big and took out the piece of membrane the was at the bottom of his aortic valve. We are so thankful that this was caught and that we live in a time when medical technologies let miracles like this happen. I just am so happy that it is over!!! Handing him over to the doctor and watching them walk away was the hardest thing I have ever done. We haven't gotten to see him yet, but we should in the next 20 minutes or so. I will post more later

Well, this is Jeremy and this is my first shot at the blog. I just wanted to jump on here real quick and give some updates on Jac for those that are interested in hearing how he is doing. First off I want to thank everyone for all the care and love they have shown to our family in the last few weeks. We really appreciate all of the offers for dinners, desserts, things to pass the time and all the love people have expressed to us.

If you haven't heard and this is your first time hearing about it, Jac has a VSD which is a congenital heart defect, a hole in his heart. They are one of the most common heart defects that there is and are easy to fix if you talk to a doctor. It sounds like a much bigger deal to a common man though. The hole is allowing oxygenated blood to flow back through the heart and back into the lungs where it is not able to pick up any more oxygen. This makes his heart and lungs have to work twice as hard to pump blood through his body. To fix it they have to do open heart surgery to place a patch over the hole. He also has a small membrane that has grown because of the hole. So they will be removing that also.

Well, it has been a long week for us already. We drove up here monday morning in pretty bad weather and a little bit behind schedual but on the way the surgeon called and told us that he had an emergency in the family and wasn't able to do the surgery on tuesday as planned so we didn't have to rush for the rest of the trip up.

We took Jac to do preliminary tests yesterday. He was a champ through the hole thing. He didn't cry through getting blood drawn or being walked through the whole hospital a few times. He did cry when he was getting X-rays, though. But that was because they were holding him wierd. We'll try to post pictures later.

Today was a real long day for him. He wasn't able to eat at all from 11 till his surgery. Which was supposed to be at two, but the anesthesiologist didn't show until 3:30. Jac was not happy at all. But Lacie and I did learn a few new ways to momentarily calm him down when he's on a tear. So I guess it wasn't all bad. Also in an unrelated and unimportant note PCMC has an invisible train system that runs above the waiting room on the second floor at just the right time to wake a dozing baby.

The nurse just came by and let us know that they made the first incision about a half an hour ago. So I guess the surgery is underway. Lacie is laughing at how much I've written in here so I guess it is time for me to sign off. we'll be posting updates as we get them. See ya!

The big week

We leave tomorrow for SLC. We are going to PCMC for some preliminary work and a short intro to the hospital class and then we wait to hear back about what time the surgery will be on Tuesday (BIG SIGH). Here we go!
I have prayed and have felt from the beginning of all this that everything will be okay. There has still been in that back of my mind all the "what if's" and I got to wondering if that meant my faith wasn't as strong as I have thought it to be. Then last night I went to the adult session of our stake conference where Elder Jeffery R Holland was speaking and his words were very comforting. As I was leaving with my parents, I decided I wanted to share with him my feelings of gratitude, thinking how many times would I get to tell an Apostle of the Lord how his words helped me? As I approached him to shake his hand I of course started to cry I was so over come. He and his sweet wife embraced me, he told me that things would work out and looking into my eyes he said angels would be around Jac's bed comforting him.
This was such a sweet experience, one that I will always cherish. I wanted to share this with my friends and family and thank you all for your prayers. I will keep you posted on the week to come.

Up we go

This is the first time he has stayed up.

Jac Today

This is his "study face". He likes to watch people and things and just see what is going to happen.

Here are his two teeth. I think they make him look so grown up.

This is one of my favorite looks.

He spent alot of time outside in the summer time, but since we found out about his surgery, I have been afraid of him getting sick, so because of the cold weather, I have kept him indoors. This was a nice day and so Daddy and Jac played in the leaves for a little bit.

This is Jac's cousin Porter :) He is so cute and trying to figure out what is on his head!

He's got such a great smile :)

New Camera

Mmm flowers.

Mmm snowflakes and bouncing. Even better!

Sitting up is great! Even though he looks a little scared ;)

We let him roll around in Nana's living room and she has a January tree... He just wrapped himself up.

Yay!! I am so excited that we got this new camera. Jac is doing so much new stuff, it's so fun. He is now sitting up by himself, only for short periods of time, but he loves it. He also scoots his knees up under himself and rolls over. He will stay on his hands and knees for a little bit if you put him in the position. My mom swears he does "roll it and roll it" from Patty Cake , but I have yet to see it and it doesn't go in his baby book till I have :) He is such a fun baby, and has such a funny personality. The other morning I woke up because he was grabbing my nose. When I opened my eyes, he just grinned.

Well, we have 9 days till his surgery and I am just praying that he doesn't get sick. Jeremy had a cold last week and didn't come near Jac for about 6 days. It was really hard on both of them, but we felt that this was necessary. Jac really loves his daddy.

We had Josh (Jer's bro), Emily and Porter come stay with us for a few nights. It was a lot of fun to see them. It will be fun when Jac can play with his cousins, this surgery is such a good thing.

Food

He likes to do it himself

He's a little off sometimes :)

I love this new stage of Jac's life! He is so funny to watch and i don't know if all other babies are this fickle, but the faces he gives are great. We now found out that he likes carrots, bannanas, and sweat peas is the latest. Not to big on pears and sweat potatoes... but I think i will give them another try seeing as they were the first thing I tried.