SOFIA'S FIRST DAY...

Hi everyone! First off let me thank all of you that have called, sent emails and posted comments on the birth of Baby Sofia. Today was a long day and poor Catherine and Ivan have been going none stop. I don't have alot of details, but will give you as much information as I can. Catherine and Ivan got to visit Sofia for the first time about 2:00 a.m. this morning. They were told that Sofia has a very extensive hernia and that her entire stomach and bowels were in her chest. The x-ray didn't show that her liver was up but they won't know for sure until they do a sonogram. An earlier sonogram Cat had in January showed that the liver was up though. Sofia's heart is structured normally but is not pumping the way it should be. So they are keeping an eye on it. She is on an osilator vent, which is a high frequency ventilator, she has several different i.v.s and is on nitric oxide. It looks like she has a decent amount of right lung tissue, but only a sliver of left lung tissue. Sofia's lungs collapsed later during the night so they had to place chest tubes in. After all that it was no surprize that she became agitated so they let her be for a while. I finally got to see her around noon and as you can imagine my emotions went into overdrive. She's so lovely! I can see my daughter in her beautiful face and all I wanted to do was pick her up and tell her everything is going to be alright and how much we love her. As some of you already know we can't pick her up and won't be able too for quite a while. I think this is probably one of the hardest things for loved ones especially her Mommy and Daddy. But they did let me touch her with my fingertip and of course I talked and talked to her. We also got to have her baptised tonight, very informal but spiritual and emotional as well. Ivan's brother Charles flew in from New Orleans, he's Sofia's Godfather. My neice Lana is her Godmother, she attends college in Virginia and unfortunately was unable to be here in person but was in spirit. I was lucky to be able to stand in for her. Photos of the occassion as well as some of Sofia with her parents when they first saw her will be posted later tonight or tomorrow. Their is one other major concern, the hospital only has two ecmo machines and their are four CDH babies there at this time. One was born a few hours before Sofia and she is not doing too well, it looks like she may be put on the machine. The other ecmo is already being used by a baby transfered here from Austin. So if Sofia requires ecmo she will have to be transferred to Wilford Hall which is at Lackland Air Force base south of San Antonio. But as of right now the neonatologist said Sofia doesn't look like she needs it. Infact they said she is doing very well at this time. Catherine will post with more details as soon as she can get online. Unfortunately they do not have public internet access at hospital. I'll sign off for now as I'm totally exhausted and tomorrow will be another long day. Again thank you all for your thoughts, kind words and prayers. Please continue to pray for all our babies. Good night and God Bless!
Love,
Yvonne