Emmitt is Getting Surgery!!

July 9, 2020: On Monday, Emmitt underwent his second swallow study at Hershey. Although he is very good at eating, he has such extremely severe reflux, that after only 10 mL, he was already refluxing everything back up and failed his swallow study. His medical team vouched for him and he is now a candidate for Nissen surgery (wrapping the top part of his stomach around his esophagus to try to prevent the reflux from coming up) and a G-Tube insertion. This is all happening tomorrow, July 10th. Thankfully, we’re going this route instead of having surgery for a GJ-Tube. Hopefully, he’ll be able to start eating via his G-Tube shortly after surgery, but it will all be dependent upon him! We’re hopeful that we might be able to bring our baby E-Bear home anywhere from 1 - 2 weeks from tomorrow. It’s all up to him! Our sweet boy currently weighs 8 pounds, 13 ounces and is 51 centimeters long! Our baby squish has been such a tremendous fighter and an inspiration his entire short life and we are so grateful for all of the medical help and support as well as all of the support from our family and friends. We couldn’t do this without you! Hershey is definitely a good bit farther from home, but we are trying our best to make it work! If you are able to contribute, share or even say a prayer for us over the next couple of days, we would very much appreciate your thoughts and consideration! ——————————————————————— On April 20, 2020 Elizabeth went to her doctors office for a 33 week routine checkup. Having preclampsia the doctor was not taking chances and decided an emergency delivery was necessary for  Emmitt that same day.  At 3:30PM our little Emmitt made his grand entrance. Due to being 7 weeks early, Emmitt has a lengthy NICU stay ahead of him. Due to his NICU being an hour away, and us needing to travel back and forth everyday, we have found that travel and food are becoming incredibly expensive. Unfortunately to add to our expenses, Elizabeth will be placed on leave without pay starting May 29th.  At this time we are unsure of how long Emmitt's stay will be as his time in NICU will be determined by his ability to maintain his temperature without the heater, eating all of his food by bottle, having stable blood sugars and not having any alarms all for 48 hours. At this time he hasn't really started any of these checkpoints as he is not quite ready. We truly appreciate any help you might be able to provide as we know how difficult times currently are. Thank you so much for your consideration and willingness to help. Knowing the difficulties everyone is currently facing due to COVID-19, we understand if you aren't able to donate. If you wouldn't mind, we would greatly appreciate it if you could share our campaign. We also understand if you're not able to do that...above all we just appreciate your thoughts and consideration! Goal Update: We are completely new to this entire thing: asking for help and having a NICU baby. With that in mind, we are asking for your continued understanding and support if you are able! By reaching our original goal, we are hoping that we might be able to extend our goal in preparing for my wife, Elizabeth, being placed on leave without pay. The additional goal we are requesting would be set aside to help us maintain our utilities, insurance and living expenses. To explain that, unfortunately, Elizabeth only had a small amount of leave before it is used up on May 29th. Luckily, her job will keep her position, but we will not have her income to depend upon. We are a one income family due to my health issues.