First post - should have done this awhile ago.

It's been a little over 3 weeks since Naya has been in the hospital and I have meant to write about it everyday as a kind of therapeutic process but I haven't. I should have started from the beginning but now I can't. Oh well. Here goes.

I guess I should start by telling a little bit of background info. Naya was born on July 24. She was a beautiful 7lb, seemingly healthy baby. Dan and I fell in love immediately. The only thing that was a little off was the fact that she had some feeding problems in the hospital and didn't poop the first couple days. They told us not to worry about it and released us on the 25. We went home and started to get used to our new life. Unfortunately, Naya was still not eating or pooping. We took her to the pediatrician on July 26 and she gave her something to make her poop and told us to follow up with a lactation consultant about the eating. I told her it didn't seem to be a breast feeding specific issue - Naya wasn't interested in food at all - but we made the appointment anyway. We saw the lactation consultant on July 27 and she also found it odd that Naya had no interest in eating and encouraged us to go back to the pediatrician the next day. I should mention that during this time, we were forcing her to eat and she was spitting most of it up. We went back to the pediatrician on the 28th and they told us to increase feedings to every two hours, which we did to no avail. After she threw up every feeding that night, I had enough and we took her to the ER in SLO.

They thought she had a bowel obstruction, so they wanted to transfer her to Santa Barbara. That's when she started vomiting up bile and, we believe, aspirated some of it into her lungs. After stabilizing her, we got on an ambulance and went down to SB. When we got there, they had a hard time stabilizing her in the ER and rushed her to their PICU. The rest of that day was kind of a daze but they intubated her, stabilized her blood pressure, performed exploratory surgery and luckily, started her on antibiotics in case she had an infection. I didn't realize how close we were to losing her that day until a couple days later. Turns out, she was in septic shock and had pneumonia.

The last few weeks have been dealing with the consequences of these two things. Our doctor in SB equated it to cleaning up after a giant party - you think you have everything and then you just keep finding more leftover party junk. People warned us that this was going to be a roller coaster ride but I don't know how anyone can prepare themselves for this minute to minute real life or death circumstances.

After a particularly bad night in Santa Barbara, they airlifted Naya to Children's Hospital in LA on August 8 where she remains. Yesterday, was an awful day and we were sure we were going to lose her. Some how my little miracle fought through.

My goal now is to update this daily at the end of the day with not only Naya's condition but also as a kind of therapeutic way to let my feelings out. I apologize for this in advance.