Finally in Our Arms

It was a really good weekend here in Utah. Some exciting things happened with Carson and we are happy to be able to share them with you all. On Saturday, the NICU lifted it’s 1.5 year ban on siblings being able to come into the NICU to visit. Heather heard about this the day before and planned accordingly. We brought Avery down with us on Saturday to see Carson for the first time. She was so excited about this. When we lifted her up over the side of his bed you could just see how much she loved him on her face. She kept saying “Baby Carson” and “Owie belly,” because of his incision on his belly. When Heather was holding Carson, Avery was blowing him kisses. I think she is really excited to be a big sister. And Carson looked pretty excited too. He spent a lot of time just looking at her face with his eyes wide open.

If you didn’t catch it in the last paragraph, I did actually say “When Heather was HOLDING Carson!” That’s right; we finally got to hold Carson on Saturday. It was so nice to have him out of his bed and into our arms. He seemed to enjoy it. He slept through the holding on Saturday, but on Sunday he was completely awake and alert. For me, this was the first time that I’ve seen him with his eyes totally open and looking around. It’s a little bit of a chore to get him out of bed and into our arms with all of the equipment still hooked up to him. But we don’t mind! It’s really helped us bond with him more since we had a lot less physical touch over the last 3 weeks.

While I was holding Carson Heather noticed that he was rooting at his oxygen mask that covers his trachea tube. She gave me the pacifier and he was able to take it and actually sucked on it a little. We’re pretty excited for that because the sooner he can take a bottle, the sooner we can take him home. No estimates of time in that area, but we hope it’s soon. He’s been eating really well, and is almost up to one ounce. Carson also is getting a room change. We’re not sure why. The nurse told us, but both Heather and I didn’t understand. They said it was only temporary and that they would try to get him good spot when they move him back. As for now, he’s in an isolation room by himself. I would guess that he wouldn’t mind much since in his other room all of the baby girls were noisy. I’d want a break too!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it in our previous posts but we are so blessed to have our live in nanny, Jorrey Stewart here to help us while Carson is in the hospital. She’s been a major help in this whole adventure. Heather is able to freely go to the hospital whenever she needs to because Jorrey is there to watch Avery at our house. And on top of that, she has been making us some dinners, doing our laundry, washing dishes and more! We are so happy to have her here and we don’t know how we are going to do it once she leaves!

Lastly, we finally got an account set up at America First Credit Union for Carson. We’ve been so busy it’s been really hard to get that done. If you’d like to donate money towards his care, you can do it one of two ways. If you’re here in Utah, you can just go to America First and make a deposit into his account. The number is 25737164 or you can have them look up the account for Carson Sanders. If you’re out of state, you could mail any donation to us, or if you wanted to remain anonymous, you could mail a check directly to one of the branches (I think). Unless someone knows of something better that we could set up to make it easier, this was our best shot.

As hard as it is to ask this, we would appreciate any giving that you’re able to do. We are going to have a significant financial need in the next year for doctor visits and possible travel to a craniofacial surgical center out of state. Our insurance will cover a lot, but we have some co-pays that don’t count towards our out of pocket maximums. And we are not exactly in the best place financially right now. If you would like to know any of the costs that we anticipate, please feel free to call me or email me about it. I want to be open and honest will you all about any giving that you make and let you know what it is going towards. It’s humbling to have to ask, but we really do need some help.

Here are some pictures of this weekend.

Love,
Steve and Heather