Gavins first meet with Dr.Scaife

On September 24th my dad and brother inlaw Gordon came up to give Gavin a blessing. I knew in my heart that Gavin needed all the prayers and blessing possible to get better. The next morning on September 25th I got a phone call at 9:30 a.m., it was Gavins surgeon Dr.Scaife asking for consent to do his surgery in an hour. So Brad rushed home from work and picked me and the kids up and we headed for the hospital. When we got there they decided to do a surgery on a baby that was doing worse than Gavin. So we had to wait. Gavin was too ustable to move so they brought the operating room to his room, it was the craziest to think that they could do his surgery right there at his bedside. That was so hard to leave him in the hands of the surgeon, I would have given anything to trade places with him at that moment. Brads parents, and his aunt Diane, and my dad were there waiting with us through Gavins surgery. After what seemed like forever the surgery was over. Dr Scaife came out and told us that Gavin did incredibly great through the surgery. Instead of having just a hole in his diaphragm he was actually missing the whole left side of his diaphragm. So they took the two bottom layers of his abdominal muscles and made him a new one. I was so grateful the surgery was over. Now we could focuss on getting him better so that he could come home.

Big Brother and Sister

The day after Gavin ws born Caitlin and Zander came up to see him. I was really nervous for them to see him, I didnt know how they would react to all the tubes in him. Caitlin was the first to go back, she was just so excited to see her new little brother she didnt care about about how he looked she just wanted to hold his hand. Zander was a little more nervous about seeing him, he didnt want to hold his hand because of the IV but he was still excited to see his brother. The doctors told us that he was to extremely well considering the size of his default. They said they wanted to wait a few days until they did his surgery. They wanted to wait until he wasnt getting any worse. Being discharged from the hospital with out Gavin was the hardes thing for me to do. Its just not right to go home without your baby, having to depend on some one else to take care of your precious baby. Luckily for gavin he had some awesome nurses who became his second moms. I will be forever grateful for all the woderful things they did to help in his recovery.

The first 24 hours

We didnt get to see Gavin for two hours. They were the longest two hours of my life. We finally got to go see him right before they transferred him. He was so beautiful, tears filled my eyes to see this wonderful miracle. He was on the ventilator at that time, he had a tube in his nose that emptied his stomach, he had multiple IV's, and had lines in his umblical cord. My arms ached to hold him, I just wanted to pick him up tell him how much he meant to us and that every thing would be okay. We only saw him for a few minutes before life flight took him to primarys. That night was scary they really couldnt tell us much, all we could do was stand by his bed and pray for him. It is the worst thing to be a parent and not to be able to help your child, I felt so helpless all I wanted to do was to trade places with him.

The Big Day

Well when I was 38 week along they decided to induce me because I had three times the amniotic fluid most people have. So on the night of September 19th me and Brad headed up to the hospital so that I could start the induction process. The gave me cervidal (it thins your cervix)through the night. I remember that I could not sleep at all because I was so nervous for the next day. They also did an ultrasound to make sure the baby was in the right position. Well the night went by slowly and morning finally came. They started me on Pitocin to start up the contractions, but my Dr wanted another utrasound to check the babys postion. The baby had turned breech over night. So they stopped the contractions, gave me my epidural so that they could turn the baby to the right position. It took two tries and they finally got him turned Brad said it was the freakiest thing he had ever seen, I passed out for the whole thing so i didnt get to witness the freakiness. Besides me and Brad we had alot of family at the hospital. My parents, his parents, and his Aunt Janie came up to support us through this all. After a long day of labor Gavin John Palfreyman was born at 7:00p.m. weighing 8'7, and was 20 inches long.

My pregnancy

The rest of the pregnancy went on normally. It was just hard always knowing in the back of my mind what was going to happen once he was born. I had to go up to LDS twice a week for non stress tests, where they would hook me up to a moniter and make sure that the baby looked alright. A month before I had the baby we went and met with the director of the NICU at primarys. His name was Dr.Null, he explained what would happen that I would have to deliver at the University of Utah and the baby would be put through a special window into the NICU where he would be intibated and transferred to Primarys. He also took us on a tour of the NICU, he took us to the "Ecmo" room where our baby would spend the first part of his life. I lost it when I went in and saw a baby with the same problem as ours hooked up to all the different machines. It was on a ventilator, had picc lines, and was on ecmo which is a heart and lung bypass machine. This all seemed so suddenly real this was really going to happen. I was devistated.

Maternal Fetal Appointment

Two weeks after our first ultrasound we met with the Maternal Fetal Doctors at LDS. They confirmed what the first ulatrasound found. At that point they said that we had the option to terminate the pregnancy, I was devistated. They said that we could do an amnio to find out if it was chromasone deffect or not. If it was a chromesone deffect then our baby would have multiple other problems and would not survive out of the womb. Me and Brad knew that this was something we could not live with if we terminated this baby. We did decide to do the amnio just so we could prepare for what type of life our baby would have. I was crying thru the entire procedure ive never been so scared before. It took a week for the results to get back, it was not a chromesome defect. Our spirits were lifted this meant our baby had a fighting chance of beating this and living a normal life.

The Beginning

After six months of trying to get pregnant we found out in Feb. 2006 that we were expecting our 3rd baby. We were so excited. Me and Caitlin wanted a little girl, but the boys wanted another boy. Well in May we found out what we were having. A little boy! During the ultrasound the tech kept focussing on the stomach, and she finally said that she thought she saw stomach above the diaphragm. This is known as a diaphragmatic hernia. She said we would have to wait and talk to my doctor to find out for sure. We left in good spirits because we figured that a hernia was easily fixed right? Well that evening Dr. Smith called and said that I needed to go see the maternal fetal doctors up at LDS hospital. Well that made the situation seem serious so that night I decided to look up diaphragmatic hernia on the web. My heart sank when I read about it, it said that 50% of the babies dont make it. The problem with having a hole in the diaphragm is that the stomach, intestines, and liver will come up into the chest and it takes up to much room and the lungs dont have room to grow properly. I was in hysterics I couldnt beleive that this was happening, I couldnt beleive that something so horrible was happening to my baby.