Hey everyone Me: Kevin here I have a big update on all three of our new children which we are so blessed uh that they were born on February 2nd but the reason they were born on February 2nd was way pre- term due to baby be having aites which is a massive fluid buildup in her tummy I'll brief you briefly give you a glimpse here. so so be prepared. Uh, this is not for the faint of heart. this is uh, a 3 to four pound child.

uh that looks like she's pregnant because of fluid buildup and the problem with thees is you don't know what's causing it. There's a chance it can go away on its own and you might never find out. Uh, there's a chance it could be something really really bad. uh and there's a chance it could be something in between which the uncertainty of that is very very scary.

And so yesterday at uh midnight I received a phone call from the medical center. It woke me up I you know, went to sleep around 10: so I got about two hours of sleep uh and which is fine I purposefully left all my phone on my watch on so that I would wake up if in case something came up and I'm so glad I answered because the doctor said Kevin we need your permission to conduct emergency surgery on summer. We have extracted bile from her stomach that's not supposed to be there and this is a sign that this problem that we were hoping might stabilize and go away is not going away. In fact, we drained fluid and that fluid has has now recurred.

So I Authorized emergency surgery. Of course. It turns out that about 10 to 15% of her small intestine, the disel ilium died. Uh, due to some form of a blockage, which could be because of an infection which probably wouldn't be viral because they're two twins.

Could be because of genetics. which is odd because you have an identical twin. that's totally fine. Uh, it could be because of that's.

just the way things are. Sometimes it's just the hand your dealt and some kind of blockage occurred in her intestine. The body basically sealed off that blockage and then as you are receive nutrition and that nutrition goes from your stomach through your small intestine where where your small intestine extracts nutrients, it's supposed to move to the colon where you can then extract the fiber and the and the bile which helps break down. you know, fats, lipids, whatever.

Uh, but but there's a blockage. So imagine like a clogged pipe bab. It's exactly like a clock pipe in your sink where you know you hit a blockage and so what happens is you keep packing on blockage. blockage, block blockage until all of a sudden it rips or the pipe bursts And that's what happened.

Summer's pipe burst and it spilled bile all around the inside of her internals. And that's what was expanding the inside of her chest cavity really bad. Uh, it's shocking. Absolutely shocking that her vitals were as stable as they were on just morphine.

Uh, because I mean you saw how large she was? I'll I'll show you an x-ray as well. It's it's crazy. Uh, what? What she looks like? This is. Um, zoom in a little bit so there's not too much info there.

Uh, there we go. This is. Uh, the X-ray and uh, what you can see are these sort of spots of air which you generally don't want to see. Spots of air are black.

and uh, they're They're pushing up against her. Let me zoom in a little bit. There we go. Infant abdomen view: They're pushing up against her lungs.

Her lungs should be expanded significantly below those those rib levels there. Her lungs are the little black things on the left and right. Air shows up as black on an X-ray and this is air in the chest cavity. which really shouldn't be there now.

That could happen from from draining fluid and then potentially air coming in or which they ended up being their abdominal gases. So the section of her intestine was cut out. Now she basically has two open ends of of intestines inside of her right now. Uh, which is crazy because yesterday as I was with her virtually all day long I had to go to a separate hospital to visit the other uh uh, two babies.

We know that she's sitting there with basically a 4-in hole in her tummy that's gauze packed and then iodine covered right now because she's not done, she had surgery. One 15 cm of her intestine was removed. Now you have two open ends. At some point that's got to get put back together.

But first, they have to go in for another surgery To see is any more of that intestine failing Now losing about 8 to 10% of your intestine is survivable without frankly dietary restrictions. Once you start getting to the 30 40, 50% range, that's where you're going to start having dietary issues. Now keep in mind as you grow, you're going to grow 10 to 15ish per less of your intestine, right? Because that's been removed at at a three PB weight. So uh, it's it is a big deal and we have no idea what's going to happen in this second surgery.

Now to see, is there any more necrosis or has it stopped I Asked the doctor if they removed any margin that that's sort of like when you when you're like okay here's the bad portion which we'll send off to pathology to see like can we figure out what caused this Uh, but when you remove margin, you basically say okay here we're going to cut this section out and now we're going to take off a little bit extra which we took off maybe another four to five. Uh, Mill So now these two things are loose. You're basically just pumping fluids out of the Sto stomach manually. These are all the tubes that are in uh uh in um, poor baby Summer right now this is a closeup of her.

uh while I was with her last night before I came back here I'm picking up Lauren so we can go back there. The babies are about a six-hour drive away from from where we are right now, but um, she was looking at me at least to the extent I can tell I I know that babies they could see maybe about 6 to 12 Ines away. So I got really close uh and uh and just talked to her for maybe five or 10 minutes. This this was a a close-up picture I got and you could kind of see her pupil sort of looking right at you.

uh and it. it was really really a beautiful moment. but I'm only showing her face because she literally has a hole uh in her tummy. uh again, it's it's covered in in gauze but you can clearly see the hole.

uh since the iodine pack is is a little transparent and so uh. we're definitely not out of the woods here. We've got a big second surgery coming up and this comes after basically uh, two days after Jay baby Jay had uh, what's called Numa thorax which is basically a collapsed lung I'll show you a video of Jay and uh, then you can kind of. you can actually see where his plug is.

So this is Jay right here and uh Jay right under his arm. There you can see his IV on his arm, right under his arm. see that sort of yellowish packaging there that is, uh, that's his sort of chest plug to let air come out but not back IIA in uh, that's because if there's still a hole in his lung, that air pressure could put you know, create issues basically for uh, um, your heart and for your other vital organs. when you have air pressure in your St in your chest, you don't want air in there.

Now the good news is, uh, after Summer's surgery, uh, she is significantly more normal. Look at her x-ray here. Uh, on the right side, you actually have a profile before of her. The picture on the right you see that black portion above all her organs which have tissue has that color.

The black is air that's air pushing down on all of her organs. So think about it like like you're doing chest compressions pushing down. except it's air doing that. That's really painful.

Uh, poor. Summer has been up from uh, morphine to fentanyl. Uh, so she's on a fentanyl drip and uh, she's Yesterday we had, uh, some more as needed morphine. She was clearly exhibiting stress while I was there.

Uh, which makes sense I me it's right after a surgery. She's been good over the night so she's stable. No. PRN which the nurse's joke is per RN but it's really Latin for as needed.

Uh, but anyway, on the left, you could see a much more normal chest cavity. Uh, the uh, the little ropey there. that's the gauze. There sort of a tie on the gauze, but see the the air.

Uh, on the right. that's the We believe I it's the large intestine, but we believe those are just the sort of normal GI gases that you would normally expect to see uh in in a child. So this is this, is much more normal and her lungs are expanding more than they had been before. Uh, of course she's um, we've got a breathing tube in here.

We've got stomach suction in here. She's not on a feeding tube because she's uh, got a pick line. so she's uh, getting her nutrition directly into her. her veins uh, both.

uh, Jay uh and violet are on feeding tubes, but that's because they're so small. Here's a picture of me with Violet uh, she actually has this little feeding tube right here. She's actually the strongest. She's also the smallest in weight 3 lb 7 Oz right now.

And so when when we say I was feeding her, what you do is you hold them and you try to give them the pacifier. Try to keep them close and swaddled. Give them a pacifier so they get the sensation of eating. but they're really just being drip fed.

uh with a tube that basically goes right into their tummy. That's pretty normal for for babies of this size. and so so far Jay looks like he's recovering from his collapsed lung. he's stable.

uh Violet has been kicking, but the uh, she's getting a little bit of treatment for jaundice which is like nothing super normal. but it's kind of cool because it's like her name's Violet and this looks kind of violet. but uh, she's great. She's super feisty, very very alert.

She's really healthy for her size at 30. They were born 32 weeks 6 days. so Violet's kicking butt Jay's recovering which is fantastic uh from from his his lung issue and then summer. we're just like so hopeful and and and and putting out whatever positive energy we can by the bedside, talking to doctors, whatever we can just to to try to be good.

the best parents we can be. That's why I'm back to pick up Lauren today. catch up with some and we're going to go be there again for surgery. Part Two Surgery Part Two won't actually fully put her back together.

It'll just take the ends of the intestines, kind of stick them up to your stomach, and uh, and then you have little bags and she'll stay like that for like six to eight weeks. It's called a Sto and uh, then she'll be fully put back together after a third surgery in about six to8 weeks. So she's still got a road ahead of her and we really need her to stay strong for these surgeries. But you know I have to say when when I had twins uh and they were uh my first two babies in the Ncu were like oh no CPAP you know the which is it creates a seal and then it's the Breather big deal big deal.

that's nothing like if you ever have a baby in the Ncu and they're in the box and they got the little monitors and CPAP it's like that's that's compared to this. Fantastic. That's great and it's not to minimize the intensity of being in the niku. I'm just comparing to myself like I wish all they needed was that right now.

so it it really shows you that there's there's so much that you like. There's nothing you can do, you could have, you could have more money, you could do whatever. None of that makes a difference. like the cards you get dealt or what you get dealt and then you just you got to do your best with it.

Now you know Summer's going to have a massive scar above her belly button for the rest of her life. Jay will have a whole scar on the side of his chest from a collapsed lung. Uh, but the goal is to make sure they survive and can lead normal lives. but this has been U it's been very very intense and uh just the range of emotions that go with it are are crazy but uh again I just you know I I it's so weird I just remember the feeling of having our children on CPAP in October and oh no this is terrible and then then like I really see terrible and obviously things could be even worse from here.

Knock on wood. That doesn't happen but it's just it really makes you pause for a moment and go holy sh yeah. Anyway, tell your loved ones you love them.