What a day!!

Exactly 12 hours ago I walked through the front door of the hospital and am just now able to take a break. It's been quite a day.

I need to take a minute to thank our medical team today as they were nothing short of amazing. We had 27 people in the room (not including Stef and I) at one point and two photographers taking pictures of everything. I hope to post some really great pictures of the delivery once they get them to me. I especially want to thank Dr. Trylovich and Dr. Zaretsky. I watched every second of the c-section and they were an amazing team. I am so impressed with their knowledge and skill and I hope they both know how much they have touched our lives.

Stef is doing so much better with the pain at this point. We had a difficult time getting it under control early on, but it is now more tolerable. We didn't get moved out of recovery and into a room until 3:00, but Stef's world is much better now in a comfortable bed. She has slept most of the afternoon and deserves some rest. She has truly been a unbelievable today!

Honestly, the biggest surprise today has been Brooke. She has some liquid on her lungs and it is either an infection or she aspirated on some of the fluid during delivery. She has been on antibiotics today in case it is an infection. It looks like she will continue to be on the CPAP assistance for breathing for a couple days and then be able to come home. It's not a big deal at all, we just can't hold her like we thought we would be able to (I actually did get to hold her for 5 minutes today which was awesome).

Kamryn has done fantastic today given everything she is facing. She's kicking some CDH butt right now. Basically she is on gentle ventilation with an oxygen setting of 24%. Room air contains 21% oxygen so this is actually quite low. They have to keep the ventilator setting higher than you would expect with the low oxygen level to get the CO2 out of her system. While this second setting is higher than you would expect, we are totally within an acceptable range. She does have a high level of pulmonary hypertension, but not a huge surprise with her lung volume. She has maintained oxygen saturation levels in the 90% range for most of the day and I have watched it remain steady at 100% for periods of time. We want this to stay above 85% so she is doing great! The chest x-rays don't show any pnuemothorax as initially suspected and her bowels are working because she gave us a nice poopy present this afternoon!! She also opened her eyes for the first time around 5:00!

So, Kamryn won round 1 today and exceeded everyone's expectations. We remain cautiously optimistic as we know this could change at any minute. We are ready for round 2 tomorrow and expect she will win once again.

Stef and I wish we could thank each one of you individually as you all have supported us so much through this journey and so much today. The emails, voicemails, texts, and comments on the blog have been amazing. I just can't tell you how wonderful it is to hear from you all. We got all the messages and will be reaching out soon I promise.

I will update everyone tomorrow on round 2 or if anything develops. More to come tomorrow including pictures!

Shawn