A New Year Begins With a Good Day

The first day of the new year was a good one for our baby boy.

Jude continued to show progress today: His blood gas analysis results were great, and the medical staff weaned him on the ventilator throughout the day. The weaning has been somewhat conservative, as is necessary to prevent respiratory complications, but Jude has consistently shown improvement since he was decannulated on Friday. He was a little puffy in his appearance this morning, but that seemed to slowly improve through the afternoon, particularly after he was given a dose of Lasix and had some good urine output. His chest x-ray from today looked good as well: His right lung is expanded, and his left lung has also opened up quite a bit, too.

If Jude continues to have good blood gas results as he's weaned even further on the oscillatory ventilator, then it's likely that he'll be moved onto the conventional ventilator in the next tomorrow or Tuesday. We expect that soon after that, provided he remains stable, his surgeon will want to do his surgical repair. We'll share info about his prospective surgery as we learn more over the next day or two.


Over the next few days, please be in prayer with us that the Lord would continue to carry Jude through these difficult times. We pray that his lungs would remain open, that he would experience good gas exchange in his lungs, that no significant pulmonary hypertension or other cardiovascular issues would present, that he would transition smoothly to a conventional ventilator, and that conditions would continue to be increasingly favorable for the surgery to fix his diaphragmatic hernia.

We are incredibly thankful for the wonderful upswing that Jude has been experiencing, particularly since coming off ECMO. It is amazing to pause and consider the many obstacles that Jude has encountered and how the Lord has sustained him through them all. Multiple ECMO circuit changes, emergent insertion of a drain in his abdomen, peritonitis, sepsis -- these things and the complications that followed were very real setbacks, and yet Jude has been delivered through all of them. Thanks be to God!