Day 2 for Dexter Joseph Dahle

Early Monday morning, say around 2:30 as I was pumping milk for our little boy, I was thinking of how hard it was to be pumping instead of nursing and snuggling my sweet baby. and then I thought of him, and how much harder this was on him than me. I thought of all of the afflictions he'd endured since birth, and I thought about people in the scriptures who had endured afflictions. Joseph, son of Lehi and Sariah, who was born into so much affliction. And then I thought of Joseph who was sold into Egypt and all that he endured, and then the afflictions Joseph Smith endured even as a boy. "Dexter Joseph Dahle would be a good name for him," thought I. Aaron and I talked it over throughout the day, and by evening, we had agreed and we wrote it on his birth certificate forms just to make it official. It's just right for our little guy.

Late Sunday evening, the specialist had read the ultrasound of Dexter's brain and hypothesized that some "event" in utero had caused a bleed in his brain, a sort of baby stroke, he called it. He ranked the severity at a 3 on a scale of 1-4. Of course, the cause was unknown, ranging from an infection to twisting the wrong way. The brain had healed from this event to some degree, leaving its print on the brain. The ventricles that store spinal fluid were enlarged. He gave no suggestion as to what this might mean for current or future brain function. The ultrasound didn't really answer the question as to why Dexter won't breathe on his own or regulate his own blood pressure, so they decided to do an MRI, but they can't do it until he is more stable, because he has to be moved to a different floor for an MRI. They make it sound like it won't be for a while--a few days at least.

Dexter had a couple of "seizure-like" behaviors, so they decided to give him seizure medication, Phenobarb, too. Just like with the infection thing--they don't know if he has one, but they've been giving him 2 different kinds of antibiotics, just in case he does. Plus he's on pain medication for the chest tube discomfort. And he's dopamine dependent to keep his blood pressure at a safe level. The poor little guy!

Xander and Elodie got to meet their brother for the first time, too. Xander seemed a little overwhelmed by the whole environment and was pretty quiet. He just said, "He looks sad." Elodie is too young to be as sensitive to that, and just said, "ohhh, tiny baby."