Carl's surgery has been postponed

Yesterday around noon we arrived here in Johannesburg, I flew and Helen travelled in the ambulance with Carl.
The hospital we are at houses the Walter Sisulu centre for peadiatric cardiology for Africa, so he can't get much better care than here.
After about an hour the paediatric cardiologist came to examine Carl with ultrasound.
Her conclusion (a bit different from the doctors in Durban) was that surgery is absolutely necessary, and if he was a bit bigger it should have been done immediately. Since he is very small the risks would be too great to do the surgery now, and since he seems to be doing ok at the moment, it would be better to wait until he grows some more, ideally wait for 6 months.
So they are keeping him here for 4-5 days for observation, and then they will reassess what to do. It could be that he stays here longer, or that he will go back to Durban and then come back here later.

Good news and bad news - again

Helen is doing ok, she had chemo last week, and had some effects of that during the weekend, but she is ok now.

Carl has been doing very well, his colostomy bag started working well last Thursday, and on Friday they started feeding him food (via a tube), and today he is getting food at a rate of 6 ml/hour :)
But... They have had concerns about the low levels of oxygen in his blood, so they have been giving him extra oxygen. And yesterday he had an ultrasound scan of his heart, and then they discovered that he has a birth defect on his heart called "tetralogy of fallot" which causes the blood with oxygen to mix with the blood with low oxygen. This is one of the more common heart problems for new born babies.
So tomorrow, wednesday 29 July he will be transported to Johannesburg where he will have heart surgery to correct this problem. This is a procedure with a high success rate, but of course he is very small and he is already recovering from his previous surgery.

Helen will travel with him in the ambulance, and i will catch a flight in the morning, and the surgeon will see him in the afternoon.

But we are convinced he will go through this without problem. He will be fine :)

More pictures:
http://www.pbase.com/tessajoughin/waiting_for_casper
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=82357430938
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=286365&id=790075440

Another update with mostly good news :)

So, Carl was born last Wednesday :)

He was doing very well, breathing on his own, and looking very good.But then they found that he was born with a small birth defect, his intestines were not fully developed, the bowel ended about 1 cm from where his "exit" should have been.

This is obviously a big problem, so on Friday, when he was only 48 hours old, he had to have surgery. It took two hours with some complications for them to give him a colostomy bag, that he will need to wear for a few months.

Right after the operation, Friday evening, he was quite weak and the doctors didn't want to say very much about his chances.

But now it is Sunday night, and he is doing well, he is breathing on his own. He is still sedated, so he is not feeling any pain from the operation. So that is good news :)

And we have more good news: On Friday morning Helen had an MRI-scan, and it showed that Helens tumours had shrunk very much. The neuro-surgeon and the oncologist both expressed great surprise that the two rounds of chemo had had such a great effect. Helen was scheduled to have brain-surgery on Saturday to remove the tumours, but this was now cancelled, and she will now instead just have two more rounds of chemo and some radiation, before they scan her again. So that is VERY good news :)

Here are some more pictures of Carl:

Welcome Casper!

Today at 13.15 SA time, Casper was delivered :)

And from now on he will be called Carl Michael Andersson :)

He weighed 1.6 kilos, and he is breathing by himself, but he is staying in an incubator in the paediatric ICU. He is doing well and the paediatrician is optimistic.

Since they weren't sure about the pressure in Helens brain, they decided not to give her an epidural and instead she had a general anaestethic. She has now woken up and she is very sore, but very happy :)
On Friday they will scan Helen, and based on the result of that they will probably operate on her on Saturday to remove the brain tumours.

Here he is :)

He is wearing a nappy for premature babies, and it is still much too big :)

And to prepare for all this, I shaved my "baby-beard" this morning :)

Before:

After:

short update

I'm sorry, I haven't written anything here in a month.
It's been a bit hectic, we have had Helens mother settle here properly, and also my best friend Daniel has arrived here 10 days ago and he is staying for 2 months, and that is of course a lot of fun and a great support.
And the news are good, Helen has had a second round of chemo two weeks ago, and she has responded well, very little nausea. Casper is kicking a lot, and he has grown a lot, last monday he weighed 1.2 kilos.We now have a set date for the ceasarean, the 15th July, in 12 days, Casper will be 33 weeks then. And the day after that Helen will have a MRI scan and probably the day after that she will have brain surgery to remove the tumours.
It is great to have a date set, something we can look forward and count down the days to.
So all in all we are positive, but still, it is a lot of waiting.I'll report more soon!