Oliver was born on July 5th 2021 at 33 weeks and 4 days with a rare birth defect called Gastroschisis, which affected his abdominal wall from fully forming. This made it so that some of his intestines grew outside of his body while in utero. We found out that he had this anomaly at 13 weeks, we also knew that a long NICU stay was in our future.
He was immediately taken into the NICU where they placed him on a ventilator and put his intestines into a silo which would use gravity to slowly place his bowel inside his body.
On July 13th, we got a call from his surgeon saying that Oliver needed an emergency surgery. His bowel was decaying from being in the silo and being exposed to amniotic fluid for so long. The surgeons took out about 5 inches of necrotic bowel. The two ends of where they removed the bowel was turned into an ostomy and a mucous fistula. He would have bowel movements out of the ostomy and into an ostomy bag. These were not permanent as we would wait for his bowels to start moving and watch his ostomy bag for output. He also had a replogle which was a tube that went into his stomach to extract any fluids in there, these fluids would change from a dark forest green to clear, to an inch worm green which finally symbolized that his intestines were working.
Oliver had his ostomy bag for a little over a month. Where the surgeons removed part of his bowel and with how close his ostomy was to his stomach, the milk that he was slowly receiving from a feeding tube was getting “dumped” out, it was not processing through as it should have been and he was not receiving enough nutrients.
The surgeons made the decision to do an ostomy reversal surgery on August 20th. After this surgery, he was put on morphine due to his pain which made him have two severe apneic episodes to where his heart almost stopped.
The put him back onto a ventilator for about 3 days until he was able to breath on his own again. They also put in another replogle tube to extract his gastric juices to analyze his bowel activity. Once his output shows that his intestines are working properly they will slowly start him up on feeds again. Once he is able to maintain his weight and eat on his own we will be able to go home!
My husband and I saved as much money as we possibly could with our due date of August 19th in mind, we were also told to anticipate an earlier arrival due to his defect. My husband, Jayce, and I both had worked up until giving birth.
With Jayce being a military police officer, we anticipated a 12 week paid paternity leave which would have started when Oliver was born. Unfortunately, since he had not worked there for a whole year, we were ineligible for this leave. Sadly, we were given this news 2 weeks after Oliver’s birth.
We were able to squeeze by these past two months with what we have saved, but unfortunately, spending two months in the NICU our family is dipping down our savings.
We would love to spend every waking moment with baby Oliver in the NICU to make this experience seem as normal as we possibly could, but unfortunately that is not an option anymore.
Oliver’s surgeries, NICU stay, and follow up care are as expensive as you can imagine. If you are able to help us with any of these expenses, we appreciate it more than you could ever know. If you are unable to help, we completely understand, and even just a share of his GoFundMe to your family and friends can make a huge difference to our situation, as well as keeping baby Oliver in your thoughts and prayers.