Connor&Hunter's struggle

Our twin boys were born Dec 16 2014 at 31 weeks. This day is special to me because it's my birthday. The story starts Dec 11. My 3 year old woke us up that Thurs morning sick so I took the day off to take her to the Dr. While we were sitting in the office, with my ringer off, I pulled out my phone to find 4 missed calls from my wife Felicia and a text that just said call me asap. Come to find out she was at the hospital a block away in labor. This was not good because she was due on Feb 14. She was transferred to UAMS in Little Rock because Conway Regional could not care for the twins that early. So at UAMS they were able to stop the labor and held her through the weekend to watch her. She was released on Monday the 15 at 3pm and on bed rest. That night at the stroke of midnight her mucous plug broke. We loaded up our 2 kids and raced the 50 or so miles to UAMS arriving just in time. Because when they first checked her she was at 6cm the boys were coming. Delivery went good and both the boy's were transferred to the NICU. They were beautiful and doing good. On Christmas day we did skin to skin with the boy's. We spent every day with them watching them eat and become active. Then the morning of Dec 28 our lives changed forever. We got a call at 4:30 am from the hospital and the told us Connor had a lot of blood in his stool and told us to get up there asap. When we arrived they informed us that Connor had NEC. I had never heard of this infection before so I began to research it. What I found was terrifying. The day was the longest in my life. They had stopped feeding him and were starting antibiotics. They took xrays and found his intestine's were swollen bad. Shortly after that finding they told us they found a hole in his intestine and would need to be transferred to Arkansas Children's Hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon had a conversion with us to let us know what they were going to do and what they could find. Basically it was exploratory to see if the hole could be fixed a section could be removed or, worst case, there was to much damage to be repaired. At 4pm on the 28 they started the procedure that would take from 45mins to 2hrs. After 10mins we were taken to a small room so the Dr's could talk to us. Our darkest fears became reality there was to much damage to be repaired and my 12 day old son had only a few hours to live. We were brought back so we could hold him for the last time. Felicia held him first then she passed him to me for the last time. He died in my arms that night. After the surgery we had Hunter transferred to ACH in hopes that we could get the boys together. But Connor went so fast that that wasn't possible. Connor was remembered exactly 12 days later in a service that was full of love by friends and family. But it didn't take away the hurt. Hunter has been watched closely by a great team of Doctors and nurses at ACH since the 28. He is doing good so far. They hit the reset button when he arrived at ACH and stopped all feedings. He has been on antibiotics since and gets xrays daily and there has been no sign of infection in him. He is now breathing all on his own and is able to control his body temp too. These are giant steps for this little guy. The boys were 3lb 9oz at birth. Hunter is now 4 lb 10oz and they are going to start feedings on Mon the 12. So we are not out of the woods with him yet but we are moving the right way. We are trying to raise the money to pay deductibles and various medical bills. Our family's have been a great help but it is more than we can handle. We have had more time away from work than we planned for and our bills have sucked most of what we saved for this. Thank you for reading our story and God bless.