Tonight we celebrated Paul 2nd birthday with the
family … 3 days after the actual day of his birth. We also celebrated his 1st
birthday exactly 3 days after he was born.
The reason I think this is so appropriate and significant is for the
first 72 hours of his life, he was put on what is referred to as a cooling
blanket.
About 1 in 1000 babies suffer some sort of lack of oxygen at
birth and the only treatment for them at this time is the cooling
blanket. If an infant meets the
criteria, they will be cooled. The
cooling blanket basically just induces mild hypothermia by bringing the baby’s
body temperature down to 92 degrees in order to decrease the effects of re-introducing
blood and oxygen to the brain. We are so
lucky to have been so close the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital because not all
hospitals are able to do this.
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| Paul on Cooling Blanket |
When a brain is starved of blood and oxygen, there are actually 2 phases of damage. The first is the actual insult and the second comes after blood and oxygen are re-introduced. The body tries to repair itself and sends chemicals that cause swelling. This can be as damaging as the initial insult. A cooling blanket can help minimize this second phase of damage.
It does not always work but I believe beyond a shadow of a
doubt that this saved Paul’s life. He
suffered multiple organ failures and I know that it rebooted his system. His liver began to function and I have heard
there were cheers when he produced his first drops of urine … his kidneys were
working!!! He also fairly quickly
started to breath over the ventilator.
After 3 days, he was warmed back to proper body temperature
and began peeking his eyes open. From
what I understand, the warming process can be dangerous, but P handled it like a
boss. It took six hours ... and I still remember every turn of the dial that raised the water temperature each half an hour until he was warm.
While we came out of this experience far from unscathed, we
know that it saved my son’s life. Who
would have ever guess something so simple as cold water would make all of the
difference.
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| P and Mimi on his bday! |
I think we will make it a tradition to celebrate on the 3rd
day after his birth. The day I knew I
was going to take my baby home with me and be able to celebrate this day with him!
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| Don't worry ... we made sure he tasted it!! |
