Jeshua's first time "under the knife"

Baby Jeshua was knocked out today for the biopsy of the rectum. The anesthesia is powerful enough (and babies weak enough) to knock out their respiratory system completely. So, they put them on ventilators from the start. Jesh responded as expected to the various anesthesia and everything went fine. It was another freaky moment to see him on a ventilator after the surgery, but they ended up unhooking it and pulling it out couple of hours earlier than normal because he was fighting it so much and clearly had regained use of his respiratory system. We won't get results back until Thursday, but we're remaining hopeful that the nerve cells will exist in the biopsy. They're also doing some other tests tomorrow to find out why some various readings are off and not improving, so they're x-raying kidneys and liver. That's new to us, but hopefully nothing major.

We left for home around 11:30 after seeing Jesh safe-and-sound post op, and spent the afternoon and evening with our kids at home. They were so in need of time with Mom and Dad as much as we needed to spend time with them. Closer to bedtime, they went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the night. We decided to check into the Ronald McDonald House here in Spokane. It's a couple of blocks from Deaconess, and much more family friendly than a hotel (not to mention less expensive). The kids aren't with us right now, but we wanted to check the place out and be closer to the hospital. We're not sure how long we'll be here or what our schedule is really going to look like. We decided to stop trying to plan it all and just wait until Thursday to get biopsy results and at least have a timeframe. At that point we'll try and figure out how to fit all these pieces together.

After checking in, we went back to visit our baby and were able to hold him again for a little over an hour. He was, again, awake and alert, and happy to be held. He even wiped out a bottle containing a tablespoon of pedialyte formula! This was really good news because that was the first time he showed interest in sucking on anything at all, and he did great at it! They won't allow him to eat breast milk yet, but at least he'll be ready when the time comes. Hopefully we'll get some much-needed sleep tonight...