Monday, January 5, 2009

Today Griffin Henry Joins our Family!

Today is the first post from Dad. Yes I do exist for all you blog readers who have not seen any posts from me. Well it has been a long day, but I found time in a dark and quite house to upload the pictures. All the kids are sleeping and Mom is recovering in the hospital. She did so Well!!!

Our house and other 4 kids are all in order, as she did preparation and pre-planning for this day.


Griffin Henry Michael! 8lbs 5.2oz!


Today I became the Proud Father of my fifth son! For all of you asking, we are not going to try for a daughter. God gave us 5 sons and we are blessed to have each one of them. We know how to handle boys and we like having all boys, and we have completed our family at 7. The next baby in our family witll be a grandchild, but no ealier than 18 years from now. :)

We went in to the hospital at 8AM, by 10AM Mom was preped and ready for the C-Section. At 10:15 was all suited up in my protective garments and was able to join her in the Operating Room. I was able to witness the whole procedure. It was an awesome miracle of mordern medicine to see what is possible, and now I know why it will hurt so much during her recovery. I won't give any details here, except to say OUCH. Then... out came our fifth son! The first thing I noticed was how big his feet and long his toes were. This is probably because Mom told me repeatedly that it was my job to count all his fingers and toes as soon as he came out. (He has all of them Mom.)

As soon as the nurse cleaned him up and weighted him we realized he was a big baby at 8 lbs 5.2oz, a pound more then the weight of Alex and Emerson at birth combined. He is beautiful, and he looks just like me. You can be the judge, but I added picture of me at birth for you to compare.















Griffin comapared to David(when he was a few weeks old)
Griffin is now in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) as he had some trouble breathing, with fluid in his lungs and not getting the CO2. He was breathing under stress for the first few hours, so the excellent Neonatal team took him for monitoring. His PulseOx was in the 70s so they were a bit concerned, as this should be in the 90s, but after a small amount of O2 it was in the 90s. PulseOx is a measurement (ercentage) of the oxygenation (saturation of O2) of his hemoglobin (blood). When the CO2 does not get exhaled, the level is too low. When he went to the NICU they first put a oxygen dome over his head on an open infant warming table in the, but untimately they had to intubate him, and he is now on a respirator for a few hours. Don't worry was he was given some pulmonary surfactant which greatly reduces surface tension, allowing his lungs to inflate much more easily and therefore eliminating the work of breathing. When I went to see him in the afternoon he had clamed down and was breathing without the stress he had at birth and his color was much better. He may or may not need more surfactant and he could be down with Mom in as little as a day if he does well. Keep him in your prayers.


We are not nervous, as we have already had 3 kids in the NICU in the past, and Griffin is much stonger and larger than the triplets were at 31 weeks. Well, I will give all you readers another update tomorrow. Good Night! Pease give us your comments or just tell us you are reading the blog, we want to hear from all our readers around the World.