Arkansas Children's Hospital

When we arrived at Arkansas Children's Hospital there were friends from the Monticello Church waiting for us - what a blessing.
We were updated by a young female Doctor...she was very sweet and kind to explain everything to us. She told us that Elijah was a very sick little boy and would need surgery. Elijah had a coarctation of the aorta. Along his aorta there is a "kink" or a narrowing - like in a water hose. This caused him to have minimal blood flow to his extremities. This "kink" forms at about 6-8 weeks of gestation...so the problem was there before we knew we were pregnant. So, why didn't we see a problem during pregnancy.....you see, God is very clever. In the womb babies have a "bypass" this is a small tube that bypasses the lungs and sends the blood elsewhere - it is called a ductus arteriosus. This is lined with special tissue that slowly closes after birth. When there is a narrowing this causes the left ventricle to work harder, since it must generate a higher pressure than normal to force blood through the narrow segment of the aorta to the lower part of the body. If the narrowing is significant enough - the ventricle may not be strong enough to perform its task which results in congestive heart failure and shock.

After she explained all this- I just asked "So he is going to be o.k...you can fix him?" and she replied "Yes, this is not the most common thing we see, but we do see a lot of them."
This made me feel much better and the crying stopped.
She did inform us that sense Elijah's coarctation had went so long undetected he had damage to his internal oragans and they were going to have to wait for him to heal a bit before they did the surgery.

Just a note - the coarctation is very detectable. My advice to every new mother is to have the Dr. check the babies blood pressure in both legs and both arms...at every Dr. appt until he/she is at least a month old. The blood pressure in the arms and legs are supposed to be the same...if one is higher than the other it is usually in the legs and not by much. So if there is a difference have them do further tests. Especially if the pressure is lower in the legs.
Oh and if you are worried about your baby...don't wait go ahead and call the Dr. and if they say its nothing....go ahead and go to the ER - its not worth it....trust you instincts.

It was really a sad sight to see Elijah hooked up to every machine known to man. He had so many "holes" in his little body from iv's and such. I could barely get my hands in around all of it to touch him. I constantly wished to hold him. I was able to stay in the room with him. He had one nurse every twelve hours. That was really nice, because I knew that they only had to think about my son and no one else. We spoke to about 15 Dr.'s in our 9 days there. They all explained and re-explained everything. Tiring- but real nice.

Elijah had his surgery on July 4th. This is a rundown of the procedure; They made an incision inbetween his ribs under his left arm - they cut through the muscle and then pried his ribs apart - When they found the narrowing they put a clamp on both sides of it and then cut it out, then stitched it together. Then they closed. I don't remember how long it took. The nurse came out and showed us the part that was cut out - it was so tiny. He said that the surgery was really boring and he even had to wake one of the scrub techs. So that was good...no surprises.

Elijah stayed in CVICU (cardiovascular intensive care) for a couple more nights. We really liked his night nurse - Joe. He would encourage us to help take care for him; oral care and changing diapers.

It took awhile, but they finally took out the ventilator and he was breathing on his own and beginning to eat.

We were there for nine days...We were able to sleep in the waiting room until he was moved to a semi-private room where I could stay with him.


Things progressed very slowly...I was finally able to try nursing Elijah...oh it was rough...he had forgotten everything we had worked so hard to accomplish. It didn't help that they gave him a bottle first, but I understood, they had to see how much was going and coming out.

Before we could go home we had to do a car seat test. We had a, what we thought, was a two hour drive (really 1h 20min) so he had to stay in the car seat for two hours straight, no interruptions, hooked up to machines monitoring his heart and his blood oxygen levels. He passed! We did have to console him with sugar water on his paci...another reason nursing didn't go well.

After that we were finally ready to go home....we made it!

OH, Natalie stayed with her Nana 8 hours away!!! I had never been without her for more than a few hours and I had always been able to get to her quickly if needed....so that was hard for me...easy for her.