open heart surgery

so after a few check-ins at the hospital and a day of fun with mom and dad, this little man was all set! open heart surgery here he comes! he was such a rockstar and said he wasn't nervous at all :) til we got there anyway.......

friday, sept 13 - cindy was all ready with his silly juice, and dad got picked (because he used some serious manipulation!) to ride in the bed til beckam was asleep.

the silly juice was to help him not remember anything before being put to sleep, and i'm sure it worked cuz this kid was stoned! haha he was pretty out of it during the book read and ride to the surgery room.

the nurse that took him was sooooo nice! she was like 75 years old and a week away from retirement, and she was sad about it! you can definitely tell the people who love their job, and she was one of them, and she made our day :)

it was after watching this sight that i had my one and only breakdown. it was sooooo hard watching my baby get wheeled away for such a big surgery. it's one of the most routine heart surgeries that they do, but there's always a chance of something going wrong, and imagining him on that big operating table with his chest cut open and his little heart getting patched up was just too much for this pregnant mama! i had a little teary moment with dust when he got back, and then......the waiting game began!

i was good to begin with but turned into a pacing nervous wreck when it took a little longer for the nicu to contact us than the doctor thought. when dr. ross walked up to us, i think my heart skipped a beat, but he was quick to tell us that everything went great. phew! he said it was a good sized hole and a good thing he got it closed up, and he said beckam did awesome and he had no other concerns - no blood transfusions and no complications! hallelujah!

it was pretty crazy walking into the nicu and seeing our little man like this :( so many tubes, and he was so out of it. i've never seen him look cuter though!

i imagined him freaking out and trying to pull the tubes out when we walked in, but he slept the whole afternoon away. he mumbled in his sleep a few times, and of course i jumped out of my chair to his side, and then he eventually woke up long enough to ask for some water. he eventually got that and then a popsicle, and he was just such a trooper!

he didn't complain about a thing and just wanted water and then food and his heart pillow of course. dust took the first night shift, and with everyone right next to each other in the nicu, there wasn't a whole lot of sleep. thank goodness for iPads!

day 2 (sat, sept 14) was a little rougher. beckam didn't complain about pain or discomfort or anything i thought he'd have a hard time with, but he lost his mind at the idea and the process of taking tape off and tubes out :(

before we left the nicu, he had his central line taken out of his neck and one of the iv's came out of one of his arms, and the big one was the chest tube. i swear there was at least 2 feet of that thing in his chest, and it didn't look very comfortable coming out! needless to say, he was tuckered out after all of that and he had a good little nap til the next vitals had to be taken.

then, it was off to a shared room on the 4th floor. beckam was so nervous about being moved, and i was too, but i managed to get him onto his new bed, and it was all about the tv baby! we were pretty excited about having a little bit of our own space too!

still a lot of tape and tubes, but beckam looked so much better here! sitting up and eating and moving around a little bit on the bed - kinda normalish and so much better.

day 3 (sun, sept 15) was awesome! beckam got out of bed to get another echo, and it was kind of a big deal. he was again pretty nervous and didn't think he could get out of bed at all to start, but once he tried it and actually sat up and put his feet down, he was so proud and happy to be up and at em!

beckam was/is so blessed to have the most amazing family all around him, and we were so excited to have dust and the tolman's and the corie's come to the hospital to visit :) it was the highlight of his day to have people come just to see him, and he just lit up talking about the gifts they gave and the time they spent visiting and making sure he was ok. love you guys!

we had a lot of down time with our beckam boo. me and him made a journey bead necklace to show everything he'd been through to make it to this point, and dust took all the night shifts on the uncomfortable hospital pull out bed - my hero! he did lots of coloring and napping and gaming and tv watching of course. he was so brave with everything and never even once complained about pain. he hated the tubes and tape right up until the last one was taken out, but we discovered that if he got to help or even do it himself, it was a million times easier on everyone! a little control goes a long way!

with no complications and a great echo and with beckam doing so well, he was discharged on monday, sept 16 - CRAZY! i imagined him being in the hospital for so much longer, and we thought the healing process would take more time and be a lot more painful, but a little tylenol goes a long way i guess cuz that's all he had from day 2 on!

this is my favorite picture :) this kid amazes me. he said he wasn't nervous at all for the surgery because his dad gave him a blessing and because so many people were praying for him, and i know for sure that the reason everything went so well and so smoothly and that he was such a rockstar is because of those very things. we had the faith and prayers and support and love of so many people, and so did he, and that's why we all came out of there smiling and excited about a little heart all patched up and ready for whatever life will throw at it! beckam was such a champ and so brave and so happy and had such good manners and was just so cute, and i'm so in love with him! no tubes mom!!!

a final good bye to the ronald mcdonald house, and we were on our way home! a crazy blur of a few days, and we left with this happy fixed little man! his heart had already gone down in size (which is awesome), and besides a few follow up appointments to check on a leaky valve, he's good to go!

crazy to think back to the day when we found out he had a hole in his heart at his 2 week check up and back to all of the echoes and ECG's and trips to the children's hospital in calgary. then, there was that time they cancelled this surgery the day before it was supposed to happen a few years ago and more appointments, and then we found out it was really gonna happen for real. being down in arizona and being pregnant and having a husband in medical school made this seem like kind of a big deal, but we were so excited to just get his heart fixed and to not have to worry about it anymore, and it's done now! done and done - yay!!!!

fun before surgery!

because of the way things were scheduled, we had 2 whole days to play before beckam's surgery on friday, so we took advantage! my cousin kim was kind enough to let us stay with her pre-surgery, and we had a blast catching up and so did our 3 boys :)

we watched chick flicks and ate popcorn of course!

we went to this huge bouncy house place and to the water park at west ed, and it was soooo fun! i don't get many opportunities to be just with my beckam boo, and we loved our time to play together!

then, dust flew in, and we had a day to play with him too! golfing and a sea lion show where beckam got to throw a frisbee to the sea lion and then get a kiss on the head were some of the highlights :)

then arcade games and red robin to top the day off! doesn't get much better than that!

this is the view i had during dinner - sports on tv - like father like son!

so fun to have the day just the 3 of us to play hard and make some memories!

and here's our beckam boo the night before his surgery! i know it's kinda lame, but i wanted some shirt off pictures, and he was more than happy to show his muscles off!

we were lucky enough to get to stay at the ronald mcdonald house in edmonton for beckam's surgery, and it was pretty amazing! the people were so nice, and there was a nice little park out back for an evening bball game before bed :)

beckam got a quilt from the quilt room and some fun toys and a cute little welcome bag, and he felt like quite the celebrity! we did a little interview before we left for the hospital the next morning too, and he was so matter of fact. he explained how he has a hole in his heart and how the doctor was going to fix it, and he said he wasn't scared but that he was excited to have a strong healthy heart! such a handsome brave little man and so clueless as to what was about to happen! and that was a good thing!

surgery week part 1

so like i said, we found out beckam was going to have his surgery in sept, and for some reason, we went with friday, sept 13th for his surgery date! we worked it out so that dust would fly in the day before, but it was just me and my little buddy for a couple days of pre-surgery fun :)

long road trip up to edmonton and off early the next morning for pre-admissions clinic! beckam did great :) lots of coloring on the way up and day 1 was pretty much a breeze with a lot of talking to doctors, physiotherapists, anesthesiologists, nurses, etc. the 13 sticker ECG was no problem, and we were in and out with a sucker to boot!

day 2 was a little more traumatic.....

it started with talk of super hero magic cream, and beckam was super excited about that! they put this numbing cream on his hands for when they put the IV in, and he was all superhero til it came time for stuff to start happening......

he had to have a TEE (transesophageal echocardiogram) to check out the size of his heart and how everything was working before his surgery, and he had to get put out for the little procedure. he was totally fine until someone talked about a tube going down his throat, and that kinda freaked him out. he was super nervous and kinda sad, but he got his x-ray and then his IV and then was off to sleep. ps it kinda sucks to watch your little man drift off to sleep in an operating room :(

i knew he was in good hands though, and i knew he'd do great. i was a little worried about him coming out of the anesthesia because he's had a hard time with that before, but he did awesome! he sat there looking like this for a while, and then we got a little smile out of him and got him to eat a little popsicle, and we were outta there!

thank goodness for stickers and slurpees to erase all remembrance of the crappy needles and sticky tape he had to have that day :) after this, we got a few days to play before d-day, and we were both super duper excited to leave the hospital behind for a while!

have i mentioned how much i love this boy!!!! he's my hero :)

home again home again jiggly jig

we found out in july that beckam would be having heart surgery to close the hole he was born with, and we found out soon after that it would be in september! so, we got settled here in az, started preschool, got to know our ward a little bit, and were excited for some cooler fall weather, and instead it was home again home again jiggity jig!

we weren't too upset about it though - cousin and family time is always a good thing! love these 2 little rascals :) such good little cousin friends already!

new warmer canadian pi's and some upside down sunday afternoon football with grandpa!

grandma's are the best :) jeter got to lick many a whisks spoons while hanging out with nana, and my grandpa and grandma smith took beckam and maddie for a little dinner date too. love my grandparents!

card tricks with grandpa and hunting with the boys :)

picnics at the park and yes......kait's wearing a hoodie! it was so fun to wear pants and hoodies again for a few weeks :)

gak faces and sleepy faces.....

maddox was so intrigued with the mormon tabernacle choir and sat like that for forever listening to them sing!so cute and all 3 boys were obsessed with watching moose and elk and animal fun on the computer with grandpa too. jeter especially was sooooo excited when he got some grandpa time in the den. they were the cutest little sidekicks, and he's just the best dad!

dust was only home with us for a week or so, and lynny became my other half once again! she let me sleep in and gave me a break on her lunches and played endlessly with the boys when she got home from work. best mama/nana ever :)

oh the raspberries!!!!! we had fresh carrots and potatoes and corn and strawberries and raspberries from the garden, and we were all in love!!! nothing beats fresh fruit and veggies from the garden!

we got hair cuts. maddox feel asleep while he was eating his snack......

conference time! we did hear a few talks thanks to nana's hair and grandpa's snuggles :)

my belly's gotten large and makes a perfect hill for racing cars up and down :) and finally......beckam - as excited as he was to get back to preschool and such - keeps saying how he wishes we didn't have to leave so he could go hunting with grandpa some more. needless to say, it was a major highlight for these little guys!

the reason for coming home wasn't all that fun, but home is awesome, and we love being there whenever we can! miss it already :)