The Petersen Family

I've been thinking a lot about miracles recently.  I prayed every day since December 1st when we found out about Ridge's heart condition, that his heart would be healed. I had all the faith in the world.  Every time I went to the doctor for an ultrasound, I thought that would be the day they would tell me his heart was healed.  I really didn't want to watch my baby go through heart surgery.  I was scared and nervous about what the future was going to bring. I wanted to have a happy healthy baby and not have to live in the hospital for the first month of his life.  I always prayed that Heavenly Father's will would be done and that I would be okay with whatever that was, but I also prayed for a miracle.
I have since realized that miracles come in many different ways.  Had Heavenly Father granted me the miracle I so desperately prayed for, I would have been denied the blessings of seeing so many other miracles around me the past month. I have witnessed the miracles of service, medical advances, skilled surgeons and doctors, prayer, fasting, priesthood blessings and the greatest miracle of all, the power of the atonement.
We have received more love and service from people in the past month than I've ever experienced in my life.  There's no way I can write down every act of service that has been given, but my heart has been touched by how many people wanted to help in our time of need.  My patriarchal blessing tells me I will have friends raised up in time of need.  I have found this true at many times throughout my life.  Especially when we had Zach and this past month as we've been dealing with everything going on with Ridge.  First and foremost, my amazing parents sacrificed their lives for almost 3 weeks to be here.  They cleaned my house, watched my boys, went grocery shopping, and prepared meals.  There is no way we would have survived without them.  I was able to spend a lot of time at the hospital and didn't need to worry about my boys while I was away from them.  Tagg's parents have been awesome as well.  They've taken the boys countless times so we could be with Ridge when he needed us.  Same with Tucker and Amanda, and my friend Paige. I think my boys saw more of them the first few weeks of Ridge's life than they saw me.  People have been so kind to give us gifts to let us know they're thinking of us.  The night before I went into labor, Tagg and I got a text from a number neither one of us knew saying they left us something on our doorstep.  It was a basket full of fun things for us and our boys.  They included uplifting quotes and journals we could write our thoughts in.  It was obvious they had put a lot of thought and effort into the gift.  We tried to find out who the mystery gift was from, but they wouldn't tell us who they were.  People have given us financial help as that has been something we've stressed about as well.  Thank goodness for insurance right! The young men came over and mowed our lawn one night.  The young women made little boxes full of snacks and activities for my boys to keep them entertained. They also took them to the park one night to play.  Amanda and Gena threw me an awesome girls night/shower with fun gifts and yummy food.  Two of my friends, Jessie and Marcie, threw me a surprise shower where my gifts were freezer meals and pantry items. It was the most amazing idea and perfect for what we would need going back and forth from the hospital everyday.  There were so many meals I couldn't fit all of them in my freezer and we have 2 freezers! My sisters are each coming to stay with us for a week to watch the boys so I can be at the hospital while Tagg is working.  A girl from our old ward brought by some baby formula. I had mentioned that I didn't think I'd be able to keep my sanity and pump for a whole year.  Formula is so expensive though so I was worried about how we would afford it if I didn't pump.  She knew that was a concern of mine and just brought me some formula.  I always ask people what I can do to help.  I really do want to help and I have the best of intentions, but people rarely tell you what they need.  For me, it's hard asking for help and sometimes it's hard to know what you really need.  I want to be more like all of the people that have served us.  When there is a need, just do something.  Show up with a meal, clean their house, call and tell them I'm coming to pick up their kids, etc. People are amazing and want to help however they can.  This has been very evident to us the past month.
I am constantly amazed by the true miracle it is to have the medical advances we have.  20+ years ago, babies had no chance of surviving if they were born with HRHS.  I know that these advances have come from our Father in Heaven and because of this, Ridge will be able to live a very normal life.  It's encouraging to think about how much more knowledge will be revealed over the next 20 years.  Ridge may need a heart transplant one day and that stresses me out if I think about it too much.  Who knows what type of advances will be made by that time though. Maybe there will be manmade hearts that they can give him and it will remove the waiting time and risk of a heart transplant. Anything is possible!
I can't say enough how much I LOVE Dr. Mendeloff and all the doctors and nurses that have taken care of Ridge.  Every time I see Dr. Mendeloff I have to keep myself from running up to him and giving him a huge hug.  The first time we met with him in his office, I honestly felt like we were walking into hallowed ground.  This man has dedicated his life to saving lives.  I don't know how much schooling Dr. Mendeloff went through, but I know it was a lot.  I don't know how much 3 open heart surgeries will cost us, but he deserves every penny he charges. He literally saved Ridge's life and I will always be indebted to him.  He is God's hands here on the earth and I'm sure Heavenly Father blessed him with all the skills and talents he would need to fulfill his special mission.  I will write a whole separate post on him and how awesome he is, but I'm just so grateful for the dedication he has to his job.
I have been touched to see how many people have been praying for Ridge and our family.  My sister's friend told my mom that her prayer group prays for Ridge every day.  I was at Walmart and mentioned to the clerk that I had a baby the week before that was in the hospital after having heart surgery.  The next thing I know she hands me a small piece of paper and asks me to write his name down.  I wrote it down, handed it back to her and she slipped it in her pocket and told me she would pray for him.  People from church have been praying for Ridge during Sacrament meeting. Friends and family all over the country have kept him in their prayers and it means so much to me! I know people often feel like praying isn't doing very much and want to do more, but honestly, I know that praying can bring healing and comfort like nothing else can. There truly is such a power that comes from prayers.
We have had many family fasts since we found out about Ridge's heart condition.  Fasting together as a family helps bind us together and is an amazing way to help strengthen our faith. I'm grateful that we can show Heavenly Father our dependance on Him and draw closer to Him as we turn to Him in fasting and prayer.
I'm so grateful for the priesthood power and that we've been able to call upon that power many times for comfort and for healing.  It makes me feel much better sending Ridge in for surgery knowing that he has received a priesthood blessing of healing from Tagg. The fact that Heavenly Father has blessed us with His power on this Earth is humbling and I'm so grateful for it.
There have been a few times in my life where my testimony of the atonement has grown in ways I didn't know was possible.  I don't think I truly understood the enabling power of the atonement until I had Zach.  After the most immense heartbreak and sorrow, I was able to feel peace and joy again. That was only possible through putting my burden at my Savior's feet and taking his yoke upon me. The past month, I've had to rely heavily upon the atonement to bring comfort when I needed it most.  There were moments when I didn't think I could go on.  I didn't think I could handle everything that was being put on my plate.  During those moments, it was such a miracle that I could turn to my Father in Heaven and ask Him to take my burden and make it lighter.  I never could've imagined how exhausting it would be to have a baby in the hospital.  It is mentally and physically exhausting going back and forth from home to the hospital and trying to figure out how to split my time between all my kids.  I know I don't do it perfectly and I know that I can't be everywhere at one time, but I also know that because of the atonement, that's okay.  I'm doing the best I can and hopefully Heavenly Father will pick up the slack and somehow make things work and bring me the peace and comfort I need.
So, do I wish I could've seen the miracle of Ridge's heart being healed before he was born? Absolutely! But have I been able to witness more miracles than I thought possible because  his heart wasn't healed the way I wanted it to be? Yes! I know that my sweet little Ridge is a miracle.  He has a special mission on this earth. The fact that he is here, is doing so well, and has received the help he needed is a huge miracle and blessing.  I have witnessed miracles every day, some big and some small, and for that I'm grateful. 

As if having one boy in the hospital wasn't enough, we decided to make life extra crazy and schedule Beckett's eye surgery for April 29th.  It actually made the most sense to do it while my parents were still here so we could be at the hospital and Griff would be well taken care of. We had tried glasses for a few months and they didn't help at all so surgery was going to be needed to fix his lazy eyes.  I didn't realize this until the day before his surgery but apparently both of his eyes would turn inwards when he wasn't using them so both eyes needed to be fixed.  One of the main concerns with his eyes wasn't necessarily the lazy eye, but it was the vision he had lost in his right eye. Beckett had basically trained his brain to just use his left eye and because of this, his right eye had lost quite a bit of vision. The doctor had us patch Beckett's left eye for a few weeks before the surgery to strengthen the vision in the right eye as much as possible before surgery.  The first time he wore the patch was pretty traumatic.  Dr. Chen put the patch on in her office and Beckett immediately started crying and saying he couldn't see.  When we were leaving the office, Beckett wanted a sticker but couldn't tell what was on them.  I had to tell him what was on each sticker so he knew which one he wanted.  That's when I started to cry.  I was thinking that patching was going to be awful but after the first few days, it really wasn't an issue at all.  I was amazed at how quickly his vision seemed to improve.  He didn't mind wearing the patch and would even remind us to put it on him if we forgot.  Here's a picture with his patch on.
Beckett is pretty weird about hospitals so I was anxious to see how his surgery was going to go.  He actually handled everything really well though.  He watched TV and played with Tagg's iPad before the surgery.  They gave him some stuff to drink that would make him a little loopy and tired.  It didn't seem to be working for a while but then a few minutes before they took him back I could tell he was getting tired.
The next time we saw him, he looked like this.  He still hadn't woken up from the anesthesia but his face looked so sad.
They warned us that when he woke up, he might be a little angry. Little was an understatement.  He woke up crying and yelling and saying that his stomach hurt.  He ended up throwing up a little.
After that he went back to sleep. They wouldn't let us leave until he could eat or drink something without throwing up.  I woke him up a few times to have him take a drink so we could leave.
Eventually they let us leave, but as soon as we got home, Beckett threw up.  The rest of the afternoon he pretty much just slept.
He ended up throwing up again that night but slept well through the rest of the night without any problems.  The next morning, he threw up a ton!  I didn't realize it would be worse the day after but apparently that's pretty common with kids recovering from anesthesia.  He threw up probably 10 times that morning. After his nap he was pretty much back to normal.  He was never in much pain from his surgery which I was grateful for.  He did have these awesome devil eyes though. You can sort of see in this picture but the inside of his eyes were super red.  It was pretty creepy and hard for me to look at the first few days.
We go back to the eye doctor in a few weeks to see if we still need to do more patching or if his vision is back to where it should be after the surgery. Hopefully we'll get good news!

On Wednesday, May 6th, Ridge had his next round of surgeries.  This wasn't as intense as the heart surgery, but still scary none the less. He was scheduled for 9:30 in the morning so I dropped the boys off with Amanda around 8:15.  She was awesome to take the kids for most of the day and then Gena took them after she got done with work.  It's been so nice to not worry about my boys and know they've been in good hands while I've been at the hospital.  Such a relief.
When I got to the hospital they had me sign all the consents for surgery.  The line up of everything they were going to do was pretty intense.  They were going to do the LADDs procedure to fix his malrotated intestines.  Because his intestines were malrotated, this also caused his appendix to be in the wrong place so they took that out while they were at it.  They inserted his G-tube (stomach feeding tube) and also did a nissen procedure to help with reflux.  They basically wrap part of his stomach around the sphincter to prevent him from throwing up. And, because he was already going to be under anesthesia we had them circumcise him also. Pretty intense for such a little man.  Overall these surgeries are much less complex and risky than heart surgery which I was grateful for. Dr. Roden was the surgeon and came and explained everything he was going to do and then they rolled Ridge away.
It was just after 10 when they took him to the operating room.  They said they would send text updates to let us know how things were going. I knew it would take a little while to get him hooked up to all the anesthesia but I didn't get a text that they had started the surgery until just after 11:30.  We found out after the surgery that any time Ridge has an operation, getting him hooked up to anesthesia will always be tricky and take some time.  They have to be very careful about how they do it and they can't afford his blood pressure to drop because it could cause a clot in his shunt.  So they go slow and monitor everything like crazy as he gets put under.  Around 1 Dr. Roden came and told us everything went well and Ridge did great through the surgery.  We were so happy to have everything over with.  A few minutes later they rolled Ridge by in the hallway so we could give him a quick kiss before they took him back to his room. They did have to give him another blood transfusion, but again, that's somewhat common and wasn't really an issue. It's so hard to see him hooked up to the ventilator and everything else, but hopefully he's done with surgeries until his next heart surgery in a few months.
Tagg and I stayed at the hospital for the rest of the afternoon while Ridge was recovering.  He was still very sedated which I was grateful for.  The nurses said the biggest thing for the next few days would be to control his pain.  Apparently this surgery is much more painful for them than the heart surgery.  That breaks my heart. Ridge is basically going to have a scar that goes from the top of his chest to just below his belly button.  This was the first time I was really able to see the scar from his heart surgery and I was super impressed with how little of a scar there actually is.  We were told that Dr. Mendeloff has the skill of a plastic surgeon at stitching up the incision, but I wasn't sure what that really meant until I saw it.  I have a feeling that the scar down his tummy will not look quite as good when it has healed.
Today (Thursday), I was at the hospital and there wasn't much change.  They were slowly weening him off different meds and the ventilator.  They gave him more morphine because he was grimacing and turning red when he would move or wake up a little.  He was still pretty sedated but was slowly waking up.  I called this afternoon around 4:30 and his nurse told me they had just taken him off the ventilator and he was handling it well.  She said he would probably be more fussy tonight as he woke up more and realized he hadn't eaten in 4 days.  They still won't feed him until tomorrow which also makes me so sad. He still has a long way to go in the recovery process but hopefully in a week or 2 he will be ready to go home!

Beckett met Ridge for the first time on Sunday, May 3rd.  Beckett is a little freaked out by hospitals so we wanted to wait until Ridge wasn't hooked up to so many machines for Beckett to see him.  On the way to the hospital, Beckett told Tagg he was going to be shy when he met him.  Tagg said he did great though.  He climbed up on the chair next to Ridge and told him his favorite Knock Knock joke and then sang him "I Am a Child of God."  These pictures melt my heart.  I was sad I couldn't be there to see Beckett meet Ridge, but Griffin is too little and they won't let him in the room so I stayed home with him.
I can't wait to get Ridge home so all my boys can be together!

Everything with Ridge was going great. He was eating pretty well with the bottle but would get tired and sometimes not eat everything they wanted him to eat. Overall, this wasn't a big deal and they were happy with the progress he was making. On Thursday (the 30th), they did a swallow study where they had him drink fluids with different consistencies to see what was happening as he was swallowing.  This is a common test they do because so many of the babies have eating issues.  They aren't totally sure why heart babies have these issues but part of it could because they are intubated for so long after surgery that they can develop an aversion to having things go down their throat.  Part of it could also be because they don't eat for so long, they forget how to swallow and have to relearn that skill.  They often lose their coordination and have to figure it out again and strengthen their muscles as they get more practice eating. Another problem is that it takes up so much energy for babies to suck, swallow and breathe all at the same time that they just get too tired to do it.
They were anticipating that he would do well with the swallow study because he was doing pretty well when they would bottle feed him.  Well, he threw us for a loop and they found that he was having silent aspirations.  This meant that some liquid was getting into his airway and potentially had the risk of getting into his lungs.  He wasn't showing any symptoms of this which is why they call it silent aspirations.  Because of this, they said he couldn't drink straight breastmilk because the consistency was too thin.  Instead, they would add rice cereal to the milk to make it thicker.  The thickness would help prevent him from aspirating.  The added thickness also made it more difficult to drink though so once they did this he wasn't drinking as much from the bottle because it would wear him out.  The most they would let him drink was 20cc and then the rest would be given through the NG tube in his nose.
Friday, Tagg and I had to take a CPR class in the morning and then we spent some time with Ridge.  While we were with Ridge, one of the cardiologists that works in the CHSU, Dr. Stromberg, came in and spoke to us about the possibility of putting in a feeding tube.  He said that it is very common and most of the babies here end up going home with a G-tube because so many of them have feeding issues. I was so confused as to why he was suggesting this when the day before the nurses were telling me he was doing so well.  He said that they hadn't done the swallow study to realize he was aspirating.  He also thought by the time Ridge gained the coordination to eat without aspirating and to be able to eat a full feeding, it wasn't going to be an issue of days, but more like weeks or months.  I started crying while he was talking to us and I think he could tell we were pretty shocked.  He asked if him talking to us was the first time we had heard about the possibility of needing a feeding tube.  We explained that the only time it was ever mentioned to us was when we took our tour of the hospital, NICU and CHSU before Ridge was born.  The neonatologist mentioned that heart babies sometimes go home with feeding tubes and I was super nervous about it when she mentioned it.  However, it was never mentioned by the cardiologist I saw through my pregnancy or the surgeon in any of our meetings.  If it is such a common thing for babies with heart issues to need a feeding tube I really just wish it would've been mentioned by the doctors.  I would've preferred knowing from the beginning that he would probably need one so I could've been prepared for it.  In the off chance that he didn't need one then that would've been awesome but at least we would've been prepared.  For some reason the feeding tube was harder for me to deal with than the heart defect. The tube seems more like a disability to me that affects everyday life, every time he eats where with the heart defect, he would still lead a very normal life.  Just like anytime things don't go as planned, I needed some time to "mourn." It was just one more thing that wasn't normal and wasn't the way I wanted it to be. Over the weekend, we kept thinking about what we wanted to do as far as the tube went.  I didn't really want to talk about it again with the doctors until the weekend was over.  Part of me felt like Ridge hadn't really been given a chance yet to figure everything out and maybe if he had more time, things would work themselves out.  He had started eating much better through the weekend and I was hopeful that after more practice, he would be able to better handle the thicker feeds.
On Monday, I wanted to be able to talk to the doctors and figure out the real reason they were suggesting a feeding tube.  I didn't understand if it was medically necessary because he was in danger from aspirating or if it was just a matter of convenience because it was still going to take him some time to work up to a full feeding.  Obviously if it was medically necessary, we would do it, no question.  But if he just needed more time to figure it out, I didn't want to force the tube. After a weekend of fasting and prayer, I felt much more calm about the G-tube even though I was still very hopeful he wouldn't need it.
Monday afternoon they did an upper GI test.  They always do this if they are considering putting in a feeding tube so they can make sure there are no surprises when they go in to do the surgery.  Well, to everyone's surprise, they found out Ridge's intestines were malrotated.  This would require surgery to fix.  Usually there are symptoms of malrotated intestines like not tolerating feeds well and reflux, but Ridge had none of that.  The doctors also recommended since he would already be going in for surgery, to get the G-tube put in at the same time.  They also recommended having a Nissen procedure done where they wrap part of his stomach around the sphincter to help prevent reflux.  I was still hesitant to do the G-tube but at the same time, it made a lot of sense to just do it.  It would've been horrible to have him go through surgery just to fix the intestines and then try to feed him again and find that he was still aspirating and have to undergo another surgery to put in the feeding tube.  The doctors said that from everything they had seen him do, they were fairly certain he would need the tube to go home.  If that was true and we didn't get the tube put in during the surgery, this would really delay him getting home because he would have to undergo another surgery just for the G-tube and recover from that after already having the extra recovery time from the intestine surgery.  If we did it all at the same time, he would be able to go home much sooner.  In the end, Tagg and I decided it made the most sense to go ahead and have them do it all at once.  We decided it would be better to have the feeding tube and end up not really needing it then not get it and find out he really did need it and would need another operation.
This was definitely a step back for how well he was doing, but I am glad they discovered the malrotation of the intestines now before it caused more damage.  His surgery was scheduled for Wednesday morning but they stopped his feeds on Monday after they did the GI test.   Ridge was not happy about that because he was used to getting a full feeding and having his tummy full.  That was the hardest thing for me.  He was pretty cranky and would cry a lot because he was just so hungry.  They gave him the nutrients he needed through his PICC line but his tummy still felt empty which he wasn't okay with. Overall the upcoming surgery was nothing as risky as what he had already been through but those nervous and anxious feelings were creeping back in as we anticipated another surgery on Wednesday.
And here are just a few pictures we took through the week of Ridge when we'd go visit.
 And this is my favorite picture we have of Ridge so far!  Such a sweet smile.

Thursday morning, I called the hospital to see how Ridge did over night.  They took the catheter out because he was peeing a lot and it was no longer a concern.  They still wanted him to pee more to bring the swelling down, but they weren't worried about the kidneys anymore. They wanted to remove his central lines in this left shoulder from surgery.  They are meant for short term use and the longer they stay in there, the more chance there is for infection. They couldn't remove those until they inserted a PICC line so they could continue to administer his medication and do blood draws as needed.  They also started to turn the ventilator down so that Ridge was having to do some of the breathing work on his own. Thursday afternoon when I got to the hospital, they had me sign the consents for the PICC line and then the team of nurses came in and tried to find a good vein for the line to go through.  It took them about an hour and a half and they tried both arms but were unsuccessful at getting the PICC line in.  Every time they tried to make the turn at his shoulder, the line would get stuck and wouldn't go through anymore. Because of this, Friday morning they were going to send him to interventional radiology that has a live x-ray where they can see exactly what they are doing as they do it.  They said that this usually leads to better results at being able to make that turn by the shoulder and getting the PICC line into the appropriate place.
Friday morning the radiologist was successful at inserting the PICC line which was awesome.  By the time I got there Friday afternoon they were in the middle of a trial run with the ventilator in standby mode.  They wanted to see how Ridge would do before they took him off the ventilator so they set the machine in standby mode where Ridge would do all the work, but it can kick back in if he starts struggling at all. After the trial, they checked the gas levels in his body to make sure he was tolerating breathing on his own. This took just a few minutes to get the results back.  His nurse came in and said he did great and they were going to take him off the ventilator.  I couldn't believe it! I thought it was still going to be a few days so it was definitely a good surprise.  They did say that some babies struggle after a few minutes and they end up having to put them back on the ventilator, but they just never know how the baby will react until they remove the ventilator.
After they took him off the ventilator, they put him on oxygen to help with the transition of him breathing on his own.  It was such a relief to slowly start seeing him hooked up to less and less things.  As you can tell from this picture, he still had a ways to go, but he was already less attached than he was just a few days before.

We were very anxious for the first few days after surgery.  They kept him pretty heavily sedated and on a lot of pain medicine. He was also on the ventilator as well.  The goal was to let his body recover for a few days and very slowly let him wake up after they saw how his body was reacting to everything.
One of the biggest issues that Ridge kept having was that his blood pressure kept dropping.  He was on 3 different medicines plus he had the one blood transfusion after surgery to help with this.  Dr. Mendeloff wasn't too concerned with the blood pressure drops and said that it was common for babies to have issues after heart surgery.  By Tuesday evening he was still having drops in blood pressure but they were able to control it just by adjusting his meds and they didn't need to give him another blood transfusion. His blood sugars were also quite high so they started him on some insulin to help control them. The other thing they were most concerned with was that his kidneys hadn't kicked back in yet so he wasn't peeing very much.  This was leading to a lot of swelling because the fluid was just building up inside him and wasn't being released.  They said the pediatric kidney doctor would come take a look at him on Wednesday just to make sure nothing more serious was going on.  Even with all of these issues, they said that it was all very normal and that he was doing well.  It was hard to believe when so many things kept happening but they assured us that he was headed in the right direction.
Wednesday morning we got a call from the hospital that they had to do another operation on Ridge.  He had a pocket of air building up above his lungs which was putting pressure on his lungs and would make it harder to breathe.  They inserted a tube so they could drain the air out.  As soon as they put in the tube, air came out which was a good sign and the X-ray they did after showed that most of the air had left his body. They also said he had started peeing more through the night which was a good sign that his kidneys were starting to work again.  The pediatric kidney doctor wasn't worried about anything being wrong when he came to look at Ridge.  They tried taking him off one of the blood pressure medications over night but they had to add a small dose of it back in because after a while his blood pressure started dropping a bit. Overall they said things were still going well.  By the time I got to the hospital that afternoon, they had taken his chest tube out, and took the bandage off that was covering his incision.
As I was leaving the hospital Wednesday evening, Ridge woke up and looked around for a few seconds.  It made me so sad seeing his little eyes open with him hooked up to everything. They assured me that he wasn't in any pain, but I just wanted him to sleep through all of this.  I know he won't remember this, but it breaks my heart seeing him like this. I cried almost the whole way home from the hospital.
The thing I have been totally amazed with through this whole process is how heart surgery doesn't just affect the heart.  It affects the entire body.  All of his organs, his circulatory system, his eating, his breathing.  His body has to figure out how to pump the blood differently once they put the shunt in and it just takes a toll on his whole body.  We are so blessed to live at this time because the medical knowledge and advances have come so far.  I've thought about how many babies were born with this same condition that didn't make it because the doctors didn't have the knowledge on how to fix it. I'm sure so many babies were experimented on trying to find solutions for all the problems that can arise so that now these doctors know exactly what to do to be able to remedy the problems.
It was a relief to get through the first 48 hours, but there was still a long way to go to full recovery for Ridge.

Ridge's surgery was scheduled for Monday, April 20th.  He was the 2nd surgery that day so they told us to be to the hospital around 11 to make sure we had time to hold him before they took him away.  Sunday night I was feeling pretty sick and I was really hoping Monday I'd feel better.  I woke up Monday and still didn't feel great but I felt a lot better than I did Sunday evening.  Tagg and I spent some time with the boys and then got ready to go. We said family prayer before we left.  For some reason Tagg thought it would be a good idea for me to say the prayer.  I held it together for the beginning but then all of the anxiousness and nervousness came out and I started crying.  Griff was so funny.  During the prayer, as I started crying he ran over to me and kept saying "Stop Mommy!  Stop!" He didn't want me crying.
I was so stressed about how things were going to go.  We had been waiting for that day for a long time.  We knew that depending on how the surgery went, and how Ridge's body responded to everything would tell us if he was going to survive or not.  I felt like so much was riding on the next few hours.
Tagg and I got to the hospital around 10:30.  We took turns holding Ridge and waiting for the anesthesiologist to come talk to us.
I have learned that any time table you are given when it comes to doctors and surgeons, really means nothing.  His surgery was scheduled for noon but the first surgery took longer which we were told was a possibility so the anesthesiologist didn't come talk to us until 1:30.  He explained what they were going to do and then made sure they had everything they needed to take him back to the operating room.  I was just glad to know that Ridge wouldn't feel any pain through this process. Dr. Span was the anesthesiologist and is in the green in the picture below.
Nothing can really prepare you as a mother for seeing your baby rolled away into an operating room to have open heart surgery.  This was a moment I was absolutely terrified for yet also eternally grateful.  Without these amazing doctors Ridge would have no chance for survival.
They kept Ridge's eyes covered the first few days after the surgery because he was sensitive to the lights.
He was hooked up to SO many things!  This was the sight we saw when we walked in his room the first few days after surgery.

Tuesday evening,  they took Ridge to the Congenital Heart Surgery Unit. This is where he has been and will continue to be until he is ready to go home.  I LOVE the CHSU.  It is seriously such a special and sacred place to be. There are so many tiny little babies here and to think about all the miracles that take place in here on a daily basis is a little overwhelming.  They are a 12 bed unit and 1/3 of their patients are under 1 month old. We've only been here a week and a half but other than babies, I've only seen one teenage girl.  They can take patients that are newborns up to age 18. Ridge has his own room and it's actually pretty spacious.  It needs to be to fit all of the monitors and machines as you can see.
 Here is Ridge's bed. They make all the babies these little name signs.
 I took this Wednesday morning.  It looked like both of his arms were in a cast. They attached these little white foam pads to both arms because they didn't want him moving his wrists or his arm where the IVs and neo PICC line were.  You can sort of see in the picture that they would also sometimes clamp the white pads to the blankets so his arm would stay down.
We were told we wouldn't be able to hold him because of all the IVs and what not but because they couldn't get the catheter in his belly button, it actually worked to our advantage.  The neo PICC in his arm was more secure than it would've been going through his belly button so it was a nice surprise when they said we could hold him.
The boys have been adjusting to this new crazy life pretty well.  They have gone a little crazy at times and been a little emotional and high strung but I really can't be too upset with all that's going on.  They haven't seen Ridge yet, but we've taken them to the hospital a few times and let them play while one of us visited Ridge.
My dad was at a conference in Chicago when Ridge was born so he flew straight to Dallas when it was over so he could meet Ridge for the first time.
Towards the end of the week they let him try the bottle again.  It was still just a tiny amount. On Saturday when I went to visit him they let me feed him.  He chugged it in about 30 seconds.
On Sunday morning, Tagg went with my dad and Ned to give Ridge a blessing in anticipation of his surgery on Monday. How grateful I am for the priesthood power and for worthy men in my life to call upon that power when we are in need.  My mom and I went up Sunday afternoon and Ridge was wide awake for about 5 minutes. We were able to feed him again but he didn't want much to do with it.  He'd suck on the bottle but wouldn't swallow anything.
One of the side affects of Ridge's heart condition and the medication he was on is that it causes him to swell.  It made me so sad to see these little toes all swollen.  They looked like little sausages that were about to pop.

Sunday evening there was a lot of anxiousness about his surgery the next day.  I actually started feeling really sick Sunday night and it was all I could do to walk.  I wasn't sure what was going on but I took some medicine in hopes I would feel better on Monday for his surgery.