Clayson's blessing

Clayson was blessed March 6th with his cousin Luke. Luke wasn't feeling too good so we weren't able to get any pictures of them together but he's our little man in his blessing outfit.

Clayson's birthday buddies. He shares a birthday with my brother and my grandpa.

Gotta love those chubby cheeks

...And that chubby belly

Clayson threw up all over both their suits. Well at least he waited til after the blessing.

Skiing the Beav

My family goes to Logan every President's day weekend and goes skiing/snowboarding on President's Day. My mom was nice enough to watch Clayson for the first half the day while I snowboarded then we switched off and she went the second half the day. We had such a blast. Devan was very patient with me even though I don't have the greatest snowboarding skills. It was such a fun little trip and it was nice to get away.

Clayson rockin his bear suit

Clayson's stay at Primary Children's Hospital

This was Tuesday morning. By this time they had put a tube down his throat and sedated him. He could still move around and wake up, but he would get so upset when he'd wake him they tried to keep him asleep as much as possible. It was so sad seeing him trying to cry. He would open his mouth and try but no sound came out. They started him on one medication that day trying to keep him from going into SVT- that's what it's called when his heart rate shoots up. He went into SVT three times that day. It was so scary seeing it happen but all of the doctors would come in and they gave him a medication that restarts his heart to get it to beat at a regular speed. They said it would take a few days for the prevention medication to get all the way through his system so we just had to wait it out.

This picture was taken on his third day at the hospital after they took his tube out. It was a little scary when they took it out because his throat swelled up and he couldn't breath very well. They did several different things and after several hours he was able to breath on his own and they let us hold him. I can't even describe how good if felt to be able to hold him after all he had been through. I always had to fight back the tears the two days before when I'd walk by other babies rooms and hear them cry and see their parents hold them. It took a day or two for his voice to get back to normal but it was just so good to be able to hear him cry.

This picture was taken several hours after his tube was taken out. He wouldn't hardly let us put him down once we were able to hold him again. I sure didn't have the heart to make him keep sitting by himself in the little examination bed. It was so sad watching him when he had his tube in. We couldn't hold him and he would just pull away anytime people touched him because most the time they were poking him or taking his blood pressure or some other thing that made him uncomfortable. It got to the point where the only place we could touch him to calm him down was his head.



This picture was taken about the time they started him on the first medication to try to prevent him from going into SVT. They tried it for a few days and then doubled the dose but he just kept going back into SVT. Those few days were by far the worst. At first they would just give him a medication to restart his heart and then they decided to try doing vagal exercises to get him out. The only two that worked were suctioning his nose/mouth to try to get a gag reflex but eventually that stopped working and they had to put an ice bag in his face. It was miserable to watch. I usually would just try to watch the monitors and not him when they did it. Friday night Devan had gone home to get a few things and my mom had stayed with me.  He went into SVT and they had to do the ice bag three different times and it still wasn't working. I usually held it together pretty well and didn't cry too much but I just lost it that time. He kept looking up at me while screaming at just had this look on his face like why are letting them do this to me. After that Devan told them that we needed to figure something else out because there was no way that we'd be able to do that to him once we had him home. Sunday morning they decided it was time to start him on another medication. They were hesitant to start him on it because it has a lot of crazy side effects, but they decided the benefits outweighed the risks.  He had one or two episodes right after they started him, but once it was all they way through his system he quit having them. Once he's about four he should be big enough to do the procedure to completely get rid of the problem in his heart, until then he'll just have to take medication.



This was when they moved him from the PICU to the normal floor. He hadn't been out of his room for over a week. I thought he might be fussy because he was kind of hungry but he just looked around and cooed the whole way to his new room.

He really started smiling and cooing while he was in the hospital.

This kid hated his hospital bed. I can't say I really blame him because they were always doing mean things to him when he was in his bed. Once he got his tube out we usually just held him all day long, and I ended up holding him most nights too. Both his grandmas came up everyday so we just took turns rocking him.



Clayson just chillin in the rocking chair. By the last day or two we were there he was feeling pretty good. We're so grateful for all of our friends and family who were so supportive during that difficult time. Everyone up at primary's was absolutely wonderful. It was a hard thing to go through, but we're so very grateful for modern medicine because without it this little guy might not have made it. I would definitely not choose to go through something like that again, but it definitely made me more grateful to be blessed with this sweet baby boy.



The scariest 24 hours of my life

So I'm definitely behind, and a lot of you have probably heard, but I'm writing this anyways because if I don't do it now I probably never will.
   January 10th Clayson was life flighted to Primary Childrens hospital. He has been kind of fussy through the night but he didn't really seem sick. He more just acted like his belly hurt. I though he might be constipated or something because he kept grunting a little bit and he'd pull his legs up a lot. By that afternoon he was still being fussy and Devan was working from home at the time so I decided to take him on a drive to see if I could get him to fall asleep. We ran a couple of errands and then we went to my moms house. She came down to rock him and she said she was worried that he was maybe having a hard time breathing. My mom's really not much of a worrier, but she took my little brother in one time when he was a baby thinking he had a belly problem and they thought it was his breathing. She said they made a big huge deal about it. It just ended up being a virus, but made her realize how scary it can be when little babies have a hard time breathing. I called in and his doctor was gone for the day but they said his PA could see us. They took us back as soon as we got in. His PA tried to put an oxygen monitor on and couldn't get a good reading so he had another one of the doctors come look at him. He felt his belly and said that his liver was dropped. (I didn't know it at the time, but apparently that happens when you're body doesn't get enough oxygen.) The doctor put an oxygen mask on him and he told the nurse to run him over to the emergency room- the hospital is next door to the doctor's office.
   Devan's mom just happened to be in the lobby area of our doctor's office. My mom stopped and talked to her and I kept running with the nurse. She just happened to be on the phone with Devan so she had him meet us at the ER. We got to the waiting room and the nurse told the ER registration lady to let us through. The registrar told us there were no rooms and that we'd have to wait. The nurse told her that the doctor had called and said we were coming and that she better let us through right then. The lady did and like she said there were no rooms. The nurse had me hold him and they just started working on him right in the middle of the ER. They cleared out a temporary room and took us in there after a few minutes. Devan and my mom showed up as soon as they moved us into the room. They had me sit on the bed and hold him. They kept trying to get an IV, but couldn't get one. They kept asking me if he had been sick or around anyone that was sick. He really hadn't been. I kept thinking it couldn't really be that bad because he just hadn't been sick.
   As soon as they got one of the regular rooms cleared out they put the arms up on the bed I was sitting on and ran us both to the other side of the ER. You would think by that time I would have realized how bad it was, but I just kept thinking he hadn't even been sick and I'm sure I was in a little bit of shock too. At that point they called life flight at primary childrens to come get him. They still couldn't get an IV so they tried to do an IO. That's where they drill into the bone and put the IV in his bone marrow. Poor little guy was so out of it I don't even think he flinched when they drilled in his leg. I think I started to cry a little bit at that point but I was still in shock. The IO didn't work so they tried it in the other leg. There was only a curtain between us and the room next to us so they moved the other person out, opened the curtain and put one of those little baby beds in the middle. They moved him into that bed, and both rooms were just filled with doctors and nurses working on him. At that point of the doctors came and talked to us and said they thought he was in SVT. He described it in a more technical way but basically what I got out of it was that his heart rate was really high and there was medicine they could give him to bring it down, but they were having a hard time getting an IV in. At that point they had someone come work on him that was a little more specialized on working with babies so we had hope that they'd get it in. I really felt a lot better after talking to him because I felt like they at least knew what was wrong.
    The reason they having such a hard time getting an IV in was because his heart rate had been up that high for a while and his blood wasn't pumping to his body. They were trying to get an IV in his head and they had so many monitors on his chest that you couldn't even see his skin when Devan's dad showed up to help Devan give him a blessing. They said they couldn't stop working on him, but they made room for Devan and his dad to give him a blessing. Right after the blessing they had tried giving him the medicine through an IV in his head but it didn't work. At that point they said that they needed to shock him to get his heart rate down to normal. We knew at that point there really weren't any other options so we told them to go ahead and do it. They put this sticky pad on his chest and had everyone back away and they shocked him. Finally his heart rate went down to normal speed.
   Life flight showed up not long after that and they were able to get an IV in. It seemed like it a really long time before they had him ready to go. I didn't even know people had PH levels until that night but his was very low. His heart had been beating so fast that his blood hadn't been pumping to his body so he was full of carbon dioxide- that is why his PH level was at 6.88. They life flight ladies had to get permission to take him without putting a tube down his throat.
   While they got him ready one of the doctors came and talked to us. He said we were through the worst of it and that we were so lucky to get him to the hospital when we did. He said that Clayson would have died if we would have waited even an hour longer. I'm sure glad I didn't know that until after he was stabilized because I'm sure I would have been much more hysterical during the whole ordeal. He also told us that they would have a bunch of different types of doctors look at him up at primary's and would figure out which medication to put him to take care of the problem. By that time they had him in the life flight bed- which is actually quite big because there are so many monitors on it. Devan stayed while they loaded him and me and my mom ran back to my place to grab a phone charger. Devan came about five minutes later and we headed to the hospital.
    When we got there we found him like this with five or six doctors around him. They explained to us what kind of shape his little body was in. His liver and kidneys were failing and his lungs were full of fluid. They ran a ton of tests through the night. They ended up having to put a tube down his throat because he was having such a hard time getting all of the carbon dioxide out of his body. In addition to the two IV's he had they also put a PCC line which is like an IV to his heart. They did an extensive echo- which is like an ultra sound of the heart. He had to have a blood transfusion and then they gave him a medication to help him pee out all the fluid that was in his lungs.
   I think that was by far the craziest 24 hours of my life. I had only had this sweet baby boy for just over three weeks. He really just hadn't seemed sick so it was so hard to believe that we almost lost him. Looking back at everything that happened we were really truly blessed. There were a lot of things that happened that I know were not just coincidences. The biggest was that I decided to take him to my moms and that she had had that experience with my little brother that made me decide I better get him in soon. We sure love this little guy and he was so tough through this whole experience. I'll write another post about his stay in the hospital.

Christmas 2010

My cousin Ali holding Clayson. Josie is on the left anxiously awaiting her turn. Clayson doesn't have any first cousins of his own, but I have plenty to share. I actually had a cousin born 2 1/2 weeks after him so he'll have a little buddy to play with.

Clayson with his Great Aunt Lindsey. She is quite the baby sitter and is always willing to bounce him when he's being fussy.

Clayson in his Christmas outfit. Actually both grandmas bought him a Christmas outfit so he wore one on Christmas Eve and the other one on Christmas.

We were so glad our little man came early and we were able to have him here in time for Christmas! He was exactly one week on Christmas Day. We went to Devan's parents first thing in the morning to open presents and then we went to my family's annual Christmas breakfast at my aunt Jamie's house.