ready...set...go: almost...

once again i apologize on the delay with the blog. we have had a whirlwind of activity going on since the last post. gavin was discharged from the hospital on thursday, august 12th at around noon. that momentous occasion for us was short lived. by friday evening gavin's work of breathing had increased and he wasn't settling down. as midnight approached it became apparent that we needed to take gavin to the ER as i told tracee "i don't feel equipped to be able to care for him at all." gavin was sent home on 1 liter of oxygen and by this point we had him turned up to 3 liters en route to the hospital. we were able to slide past all of the sick people in the ER (which was a huge priority and blessing for us) and within minutes people were running around and care began. gavin was very gray in color and his lips and extremities were beginning to turn blue. based on how he looked the ER doctor wanted to intubate him to which we fought and asked them to wait a few minutes. because gavin's baseline of breathing is so different than a regular baby he has a different threshhold. gavin had been turned up to 5 liters of oxygen and his sats were not coming above 78-80. It became apparent that things were seriously wrong and  i could see the scared look in his eyes. both tracee and i began to freak out although mine lasted much longer than hers. i thought i might lose my little baby boy right there on the table as people scrambled around and they brought the coding cart into his room "just in case."
at the suggestion of someone from the NICU they gave him a treatment of Albuterol and that immediately dialated his airways to where he could get the oxygen he needed. praise God!!! some of my fears were then relieved and i burst into tears when we saw a couple of staff members from the NICU who were down to grab gavin and take him back up to what we have come to know as a very safe place. because gavin had only been gone a couple of days, they were able to readmit him to the NICU. thank God!! these are the people who know everything about gavin and fight for gavin and know how to care for gavin. we were at peace knowing we didn't have to worry about explaining ourselves to a team of people who didn't know gavin!  they place gavin in an incubator and rushed him upstairs to an isolation room in the NICU and immediately got him hooked up to CPAP. side note: gavin hates CPAP and yet he didn't even care. he flopped his arms back behind his head and probably felt like a million bucks knowing he could finally breathe. that's a hard thing as a parent. we never want to relive what we went through a couple of days ago. i know that our minds and bodies are going through shock. our brains have sort of cut us off from the traumatic pain we have been going through as we attempt to unpack everything.
gavin is back in the NICU for round 2. we don't have a go home date in sight yet and everyone is on board with tweaking his cares so that we don't have a round 3. we need better monitors for home than we had before. we need better support at home than we had before. we need humidified and purified air - where we didn't have it at home before. tracee and i have to wrap our minds around the fact that we cannot just normalize this situation. we are having to mourn the loss of a typical birthing plan, typical delivery, typical baby and typical routine with baby once home. it's hard. it's painful. we are going to have to live in a bubble for months as it is almost RSV season. while RSV can really slow down a full term, healthy baby, RSV can kill gavin.
please pray for us. we need support on so many levels. if you feel led to give to us than we have an account set up for gavin at wells fargo. if you feel led to help out with meals we need to have that up and running again. this is a time in our lives where we are needy. i don't like to be in this position but i don't have much say in the matter apparently. please continue to comment and message us and reach out on facebook, etc. we love reading your comments and affirming us as we persevere.
may you all continue to be blessed in your lives and may our story and gavin's life touch you in some way or another.

jeramy