Baby Jacob

After some nagging from my brother Steve and his wife Steph I have decided to enter the world of blogging (gasp). This is a big step for me, because I pretty much despise technology. I also have very few computer skills, so this will never be cute like everyone else's blogs seem to be, but I guess if you want to know what is going on with us you will just have to suffer through my ugly blog. I'm sorry.


As most of you know Steve and I recently had a new addition to the family. Jacob was born July 18th at the University of Utah hospital. He was immediately taken to Primary Children's Hospital and that has been his home for the past 6 weeks. I guess I'll give a recap of the last 6 weeks, and I promise future posts will be shorter.


Jacob had emergency surgery a few hours after he was born to restore blood flow to the bowel that was on the outside of his body and was twisted. There were also two perforations that were repaired. The surgeons didn't remove any bowel during this surgery, but he was only born with about half the intestines he should have, something called vanishing midgut. Somewhere during his development a section of intestine had died and reabsorbed, so the large and small intestines weren't connected. 

before surgery

after surgery

The surgeon was planning to do another surgery when Jacob was 5 days old because she thought some of the intestine would die, making him very sick and she would need to go in and remove it. He was doing so well though, that she ended up not doing the surgery then. 

He came off the ventilator after 11 days and we were finally able to hold him. 

He slowly improved and got his first taste of food when he was 17 days old. He could only have 2 ml (about 6 drops) every 2 hours, but even that small amount didn't agree with him. It turned out he had a stricture (narrowed spot) in his intestine so when they fed him the formula couldn't get through that spot, the bacteria normally in the bowel became overgrown and ended up in his bloodstream making him very sick. He hasn't had any food since that happened.

Jacob had his second surgery on Aug 24. 

He went from this

to this

The surgery turned out to be very complicated. It took the surgeon 2 hours to cut through all of the scar tissue so that she could get his intestines out and see what was going on. Unfortunately, some the intestine that was originally outside his body and had died and needed to be removed. All of his intestines were reconnected, yeah no more ostomy! There was a lot of swelling so they couldn't close him. He went back to surgery on Aug 30th and they were able to close him. He is still on the ventilator because everything is still very swollen which puts a lot of pressure on his lungs. His biggest problem right now is pain control. He has been on narcotics for so long that he is very tolerant. He is getting huge doses, but they aren't working very well. The Dr increased the dose of morphine again last night and he did seem more comfortable when I so him this morning so, hopefully he is feeling a little better. Babies just aren't supposed to hurt.