Welcome to the world Emmie!

8 lbs 11 oz

Caroline Emerson Grace "Emmie" finally decided to make her debut on 3/5/10 at 12:20. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 11 ozs and was feisty and happy. A few hours later she started to turn blue and we realized that she has a congenital heart defect called pulmonary artery atresia which is a more severe variant of tetralogy of Fallot. She and Liz were transferred to Ochsner main campus where she's in the pediatric intensive care unit. We're very pleased with all her nurses and doctors here. She's on a ventilator now and is tentatively scheduled for surgery on Tuesday.

Right now, the blood in her right and left ventricles mix together and is only able to get to her lungs via her ductus arteriosis. The ductus arteriosis is what lets babies live inside the uterus without breathing and normally closes soon after birth when babies start to breath. So when her ductus started to close she wasn't able to get blood to her lungs and she turned blue. She's on a prostaglandin medicine right now to artificially keep it open until surgery but she has less oxygen than normal in her blood since the blood has to mix in her ventricles. The surgery will hopefully be able to close the hole in between her ventricles and a tube will connect up to where her pulmonary artery should be and she will then have normal oxygen levels. However, the tube won't last forever and will have to be replaced several times over the course of her childhood and into adulthood. We hope that she will be able to have a relatively normal life but she likely will have some limitations. If anything looks different than expected or doesn't go perfectly, she will have a shunt placed instead and that will do the same thing as the ductus. Then we'll wait until she's about 6 months and do the whole surgery, and until then she'll have low oxygen levels in her blood.

The surgery will take about 5 hours, and we'll update everyone after.

Liz is doing fine. We appreciate everyone's thoughts, prayers, messages, and emails. We have only lived in NOLA for 5 years but have been truly blessed with a fantastic circle of friends and second family. To our families and friends elsewhere, a part of you is with this precious child and she appreciates and knows you love her and are thinking about her. This is the most difficult thing Liz and I have ever been through, but we will get through this and Emmie will be running around and playing in a short time. We will look back and show her what a strong little girl she was.

Thanks to you all for your support and much love,

Amy, Liz, and Emmie