Happy Birthday, Ethan!

I can't believe it's been a whole month since I last blogged! When it rains - it pours. And well lately it's just been raining busy! But I have to do a short blog in honor of my baby, Ethan. Well as of yesterday he's not a baby anymore. Five years ago yesterday our youngest was born at Riverview Hospital in Noblesville, Indiana. It was a scheduled C-section so of course I had my hair done and my make-up on and my nails done. (These are luxuries you take when you know when your baby is arriving.) The house was completely ready for the new baby to arrive. The one thing I wasn't totally prepared for is what happened following the C-section. Ethan was born 7 lbs. 12 ozs. and 19 inches long. He cried a hearty cry and had great color. They kept me on the table to finish sewing me up and Jason went with our new baby boy and the nurses to the nursery to clean the baby up and show him off to the family eagerly waiting on the other side of the glass in the nursery waiting room. The rest of it Jason told me about later. My best friend Lynne had been present during the operation, a freak blessing due to the timing of her finishing her clinicals, and she was with Jason as he carried Ethan down the hall. She happened to notice Ethan's color changing. The nurses quickly took him and began giving him oxygen. They discovered that Ethan's lungs weren't fully developed and the more he breathed the weaker his lungs became. He didn't have the lubricant on the inside of the lungs that keep them from sticking together when you breathe. So they rushed him to Riley Children's Hospital and hooked him to several tubes and machines. Jason stayed with him there until they let me leave my hospital a day and a half later. That was the longest and loneliest day and a half I've ever had. Ethan was very touch and go for the first week. When I first saw him I couldn't stop the tears. He had a machine breathing for him that made his chest pump up and down in a very mechanical way. He had patches over his eyes because he couldn't have anything stimulating at all - we couldn't even touch him at first. His body was all puffy and swollen from the morphene they were sedating him with. He didn't look anything like the baby I had just welcomed to the world a day and a half earlier. They told us a few times that he might not make it. A few times it truly looked like they might be right. They also told us that he would likely spend 2 or 3 months in the hospital. But we prayed and believed that he'd be healed and be home by Thanksgiving. God is great!!! The day before Thanksgiving we took him home! He never had to go back again. Just a few follow-up checks and one year later they gave him a clean bill of health!! God is faithful! Thank you Jesus for giving us our wonderful little Jason look-a-like!