A Day in the Life of the Browns: January 2009

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Grandma Visits

Brandon's Mom came out over New Years and I wanted to post some pictures from the visit! The kids had such a great time visiting and getting to know Grandma better! We miss you Grandma!

Monday, January 19, 2009

My bestest friend Christina welcomed Baby Cali Michelle Borja into the world on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 5:19pm. Cali weighed in at 7 pds, 7 oz. Mama and baby are doing great and we are so thankful that everything went smoothly and everyone is so healthy!

We love the Borja's and can't wait to continue to watch our families grow together and see God do amazing things in their lives! Congratulations!!

The 3 Sisters, Big brother-Giovanny, and baby Cali!

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Mama's Boy!

So, my favorite part of the day of Owen's procedure, besides the fact that his procedure was a great success, was that Owen started saying "MAMA"!!!! He said it once or twice before his procedure while we were in the waiting room. We weren't sure if it was just a fluke or for real. But then after the procedure once he woke up he was reaching for me and babbling "mama" constantly! I had lots of witnesses that it wasn't a fluke anymore:) Plus I got it on video!

Owen's Doing Great!

Owen is doing great! Thank you all for your support and prayers for our baby boy! He is such a sweet boy too! He kept trying to give all the nurses kisses. Brandon and my dad thought he was a pretty smart boy:) Even when he was fussy with me and Brandon, as soon as the nurse came in the room he was all smiles and coos. Little Stinker! In the picture he has an IV in his foot. He pretty much left it alone except that he really liked to chew on the wires. They also kept putting these heart monitors on his chest and those were definetly his favorite thing to pull off and chew on:) Doesn't he look so cute in his little hospital gown!! When they finally took out his catheter it was all bent since his favorite thing to do was pull up on the crib and bounce!

The hardest part of the day was when Brandon and I took Owen into the lab where the procedure would be done and they put a gas mask over his face. He was so upset by it and flailed around so much and then just went limp. It was so hard to walk out of that room and leave him in there without one of us to stay with him.

The doctor said that the hole was a bit bigger than he anticipated(about 3.3 mm), but the device they put in fit perfectly. He was under for about 2 hours and after the anesthesia wore off he was bouncing around in his crib--showing more energy than he normally does. He didn't sleep much all day (like they said he would!) and didn't really get to nap much with all the nurses coming in and not in his normal routine. We finally got him to

sleep around 8pm and he would have been out for the count, but they decided to give us a roommate around 9pm! I'm not sure why hospitals think it is a good idea for children to have roommates?! The other baby was around the same age as Owen, but was crying a lot and his mom was having a hard time settling him down. And that woke Owen up and started off the crying war between the two of them til almost midnight. Once we had both babies to sleep and us momma's were trying to get a few minutes of rest, the nurses come in to do "stuff" to them! I was like, "Are you kidding me?!!" So, then the cycle started all over. Finally around 2 am we were all asleep again. So, we got about 3 hours of sleep before they started messing with us again.

Around 6am they came in to do an x-ray of Owen't heart and then a little bit later they did another echogram of his heart. It's pretty neat that they can bring the machines into our room and do everything right there so we don't have to drag our baby all over the hospital. They even had a portable x-ray machine.

After me asking everytime someone came in our room, "When are we going to be discharged?", they let us leave around 11:30am. Owen, who would not nap at all with everything else going on around him, was asleep before we got out of the parking garage! Poor guy was exhausted and needed to catch up on some of his rest. Once we got him home he slept for another 3 hours, then slept the whole night thru and woke up super happy this morning! He's been crawling around and playing with all of his toys, and loving on his big sister too:)

Upon discharge, Owen's cardiologist came in to talk to us. He was very happy with how the procedure went and said all the tests they had done that morning looked really good. Owen's heart is still enlarged, but over the next few months it should go back to normal. One of the valves is also still leaking, but he is expecting all that to go back to normal in the next 6 months to 1 year. So, we will be going back to see him in 2 weeks, 6 months, and then at the year mark. After that, if everything is back to normal, then we won't have to see the cardiologist anymore.

Thank you to everyone for praying with us for this procedure to go smoothly and to work! We appreciate all the love you all have showered upon our precious baby boy:)

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Owen's Procedure

Tomorrow is Owen's procedure to fix his PDA. Just wanted to continue to ask for your prayers for Owen. He goes in tomorrow, Thursday, January 15th at 8am for a procedure to fix his heart. The doctors are planning on doing the less invasive procedure, a cardiac catheterization, and we are praying that he is big enough for this procedure. They won't be able to tell until they are putting the device in the hole and then release dye to see if it fits right. If it does not fit right, and the only reason it wouldn't would be because he is still too small, then they will have to do a more invasive procedure where they cut his chest open and a heart surgeon would have to be called in to perform this.

The doctor is pretty confident that the catherization should work well for Owen though. We will let you all know how it all turns out tomorrow. Pray for our little Owen to handle all the scariness of being in the hospital as well as for the procedure. He turned 8 months today:)

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

For Christmas Eve we went to the church service and then came home and let the kids open one gift each! Then we had cheese fondue and chocolate...yum! After that we put cookies and milk out for Santa and sent Violet off to sleep!

Owen LOVES his new truck!

Violet came in to wake us up Christmas morning and the first thing out of her mouth was, "Did Santa come yet!". Both kids had a blast opening presents and what a great first Christmas Owen had too. And Santa brought Violet a brand new BIKE! She was thrilled and we had to test it out right away:)