Preface

Thursday July 20th 16:48

I am going to start the blog off with an email that I had sent out to some family and friends the night Harper was born.  It will give some brief background information about Harper's situation, which will be helpful in understanding the posts that will follow from here.  Please read the information below and look forward to many updates from Karen and me in the upcoming days, weeks, months and even years about Harper's progress and miraculous story.  Thank you!

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The following was written at 23:00hrs on Tuesday July 17th, which was the night of Harper's birth day!

Hey folks - 

Some of you have heard the news and others are in the dark.  This email is the easiest way for me to relay allof the information to everyone at once...

Let's start with the basics - 

IT'S A GIRL!  6 and half pounds with a 19 inch length.  She was born this morning (July 17th) and her name isHarper Cacique Wilson and she has a head full of hair, long fingers and toes and will be picking up a discus in no time.

Mom is doing great - Karen was a real trooper and did a great job!

Now... many of you remember that our due date was at the end of August, so Harper was born 6 weeks early.  She is technically a preemie and is currently in the NICU of the Cleveland Clinic.  Let me give you a full run down of how we go to this point.

Saturday, Karen's water broke and we were admitted to the hospital right away because it was so early.  We spent the weekend in the hospital trying delay labor with antibiotics, prep baby's premature lungs with steroids and make Karen as comfortable as possible.  We had an ultrasound scheduled for Monday to help give us a better idea of the size of the baby, which would give a better idea of when the doctors would induce.

Monday morning we went in for ultrasound and that is when they told us the news...

baby's body was filled with fluid around the lungs and possibly other areas.  There were many concerns with this situation.  1) Once delivered, the baby was going to only have a couple crucial minutes to drain the fluid and re-inflate the suppressed lungs.  2) If the lungs had been compromised for too long or earlier in their development, then the lungs would not have been strong enough to support baby even if they could have been re-inflated a little.  The condition is called 'Hydrops" and is generic for excess fluid in body cavities.  Hydrops very often results in death of the newborn because of complications that I mentioned above.  The doctors gave our baby a less than 50% chance to make it out of the delivery room (longer than 10 minutes after delivery).  They also informed us that possible causes for hydrops were Down's and Turner's syndrome along with some other chromosomal issues that we may have to deal with long term.

Obviously this news was very hard for not only Karen and me, but also our families that day.

Karen go induced Monday afternoon and labored all through the night.  She and I slept minimally through the night and as morning came we had prepared ourselves for the worst of what was to come.

At 8:25, she was born and was immediately passed of to a team of neonatologists who got to work on her.  Those critical minutes were upon us and we tried our best stay distracted while they worked only a few feet from us.  The minutes passed by before the head doctor said "Dad, come look at your daughter."  She looked pink, which was a great sign, and they kept working.  A minute or two later, I was allowed to hold her hand.  And a few minutes later they gave us the update that she survived those critical milestones... the fluid was mostly out and they inflated the lungs successfully.

They took her away to the NICU to continue working, but assured us that everything went 100x better than expected and baby was pulling through stronger than expected, as well.  They let us know that the possibility of those chromosomal issues were not the cause of the hydrops and baby was otherwise healthy!

SO... here we are now.  Harper is in the NICU - she has two chest tubes to keep the fluid from building up.  They found that chylothorax (fluid in the chest cavity) is being caused by a small duct that is leaking.  This can either seal itself up within a week or two, or they may have to perform a small surgery on Harper to seal it up.

After the night of horrific thoughts that we had last night, having our baby in the NICU with the cause of the problem discovered is THE BEST scenario that could have arose from the situation.  We are overly joyed that baby is doing so well and that the doctors are so optimistic about her recovery ahead.  We will be in the hospital with her during her stay; currently we are at Hillcrest, but may be moved to Main Campus if Harper's body does not seal the duct on it's own.  Only time will tell what the next step is to make her all better, but the fact that we are at the point where we can just wait to see her get better is just fine with us compared the alternative.

That's the rundown - sorry for the lengthy email, but like I said, there is a lot of information about the whole situation and I wanted to make it as clear as possible.  Below are the "Cliff's Notes" of the situation.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for all of your support to Karen and me so far!!  We will keep you updated as we find out more and don't hesitate to call either one of us to check in.  Once again, sorry for the mass email, but it's a long story to tell so many times.  And after the long weekend and start to the week, this was easiest for me to keep you all informed and save me from retelling a tough story.

Thanks!  Hope everyone else is doing well.  We are all smiles here and are so positive about the uphill battle ahead of us here.

xo =W= and Karen and Harper  :-)