It's a Girl!!!!

Jamie and Charlie had a baby girl, Charity Lynn Blanchard at 4:36 AM on Tuesday, July 13th 2010.  She weighed 6 pounds and 9.9 ounces and measured 19 inches.

Now for the details....

Jamie's water broke Monday morning at 8:20 and we ended up in the hospital at 11:30.  It was a little rough, but little Charity came out.  (We had Gilmore Girls on the whole time, so now the theme song will be permanently in everyone's head!)  Jamie pushed for 2 hours before Charity said hi to the world.

Jamie did not get much rest the next day, but we had a little complication anyways.  At around 5:30 pm, Charity was taken to the nursery in order to get some gunk out of her mouth, but they were not able to get the vacuum tube into her throat.  That lead to a call to our doctor which lead Charity to her first car ride - an ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, the leading children's hospital downstate.  She was immediately admitted into the baby ICU.

After some long hours, Jamie was up for about 41 hours by the time she went to bed early Wednesday morning, it was decided that there was not any problems with Charity's throat.  However, their testing lead to the discovery of another problem.

As x-rays were being taken, it was realized that Charity needed to poop!  She had not done this yet, so there was a concern.  As of right now, we still do not have any definitive answers.  According to the doctor, there could be a plug holding things up.

There is also a possibility that she has a problem with her intestine called Hirschsprung's Disease.  This isn't quite as scary as it sounds.  Essentially, it would mean that she has a little bit of intestine that has nerve problems which is not allowing her to push stool out.  It would mean surgery for Charity, but she would be fine in a month or two.  There is nothing permanent about it.  If things do not progress, she will get a test done as soon as today to see if this is a problem or not.  The results will take about 3 days.  If she does have the disease, she will receive some more tests.  After her tests, she would have the bad part of her intestine cut out.  After a week or two of recovery, she will be home with us and a colostomy bag for somewhere between a week and a month.  After that, she would be back into the hospital for 1-2 weeks for another surgery to reattach the good ends back together.  Afterwards, she would be all ours to take home without any other repercussions or signs.

We got back home last night around 12:30 and while we were at the hospital, Charity passed 2 stools!  They were not quite as fully formed as they wanted them to be, but something is coming out!!!  We are praying that when we go back today they will tell us that she has been stooling full stools all night and she is looking better.

Now for the summary...

To sum it up, Charity Lynn's birthday is going to be on July 13th, so you can go ahead and mark your calendars now.  She is in St. Francis Hospital in Peoria where she is going to stay until she eats and poops (she definitely has the whole peeing thing down.)  She may need surgery, but she may not.  No matter what, she will be home in our arms for sure, nothing about this is life or death, just an inconvenience.

One more thing - Charlie has hijacked this blog from Jamie.  Her job right now is to eat, drink lots of water, and rest so that she can get plenty of breast milk for our daughter and to pray .  As we are at the hospital, I will be updating this thing as much as humanly possible to keep everyone informed.

We appreciate all of your loving thoughts, but we will not be answering cell phones much right now.  We will need them off while we are visiting Charity.  We may not even call back.  Please don't take it personally.  This blog will have the same info as we have, so just check back here.  We will be off and on Facebook, but again we may not be able to respond a whole lot, so thank you again for your thoughts.

More detailed labor/hospital stories are in the works for those who love details!

We do have one more favor from everyone reading this blog - Pray for Poop!

Now for something I know that you will really like...

Baby's First Picture

Baby's First Trip (Neonatal ICU in St. Francis)

Video Time