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<\/a><\/p>\nThe week of\u00a0Sept 8th<\/span>\u00a0there was a virus sweeping through our house.\u00a0 All of the kids were catching it one after the other starting with the oldest.\u00a0 It was just a low grade fever and cough.\u00a0 It seemed to last about 3-4 days and then it was done.\u00a0 Harvey was the last to catch it and had just been running a bit of a fever but that was really it.\u00a0 On Sept 18th I put him to bed after nursing him like every other night.\u00a0 The morning of Sept 19th he woke up crying, I went to get him and change his diaper and he had a stuffy nose and was coughing.\u00a0 I changed his diaper quickly and started cleaning off his nose.\u00a0 He started gagging and turned blue.\u00a0 I picked him up and leaned him forward to help him get the mucus out of his throat.\u00a0 He threw up and started crying.\u00a0 It scared me so bad.<\/p>\n I thought he would be better by day 3 and he seemed to be worse.\u00a0 So I got on the phone with the pediatrician to see if I could get him in.\u00a0 The earliest appointment they had was\u00a03:30<\/span>.\u00a0 I took it but still felt uneasy.\u00a0 He had fallen back asleep in my arms.\u00a0 I decided I’d check his temp and try to nurse him.\u00a0 He had a low grade temp so I sat down to nurse him.\u00a0 He would latch for just a second and then pull away and gasp.\u00a0 By this point I was scared.\u00a0 Something was wrong. I tried to get him to wake up but his eyes just rolled back in his head and he was limp.\u00a0 I was shaking as I called my husband and told him to meet me at the ER.\u00a0 As calmly as\u00a0I could I got Deacon and Finley in their carseats and buckled up.\u00a0 Then I got Piper and Harvey in their carseats and headed to the ER.\u00a0 I kept reaching back and grabbing Harvey’s hand to make sure he was still conscious.\u00a0 He would grip my finger.\u00a0 We don’t live far from the ER and my husband got there before I got him out of the car.\u00a0 He stayed with the other kids while I took Harvey in.\u00a0 He just snuggled into my arms and slept.\u00a0 They took us back immediately and checked vitals and everything was fine.\u00a0 We waited for the doctor and I asked if I could nurse him.\u00a0 I tried again and he puked.\u00a0 He was lifeless.<\/p>\n They decided to start an IV to get fluids in him as he was dehydrated.\u00a0 He hasn’t nursed since going to bed the night before.\u00a0 They tried ELEVEN times to start an IV.\u00a0 He never flinched.\u00a0 By this time I was sick…something was very wrong.\u00a0 I asked that we take him upstairs to the pediatric unit.\u00a0 After a nasty remark by the nurse I was shown up stairs.\u00a0 The nurses knew right away something wasn’t right and the doctor on call was right by my side in an instant.\u00a0 They realized they wouldn’t be able to get an IV b\/c his veins were so small and the ER nurses had blown any that he did have.\u00a0 So they did an IO line in his fibula (its an IV that goes into the bone).\u00a0 They pumped him with fluids and the doctor said he needed to be admitted but I’d have to go back to the ER to do that.\u00a0 After what seemed like forever but was really about an hour we got admitted and back to the pediatric unit.\u00a0 The doctor ordered a spinal tap and CT scan.\u00a0 She had the results of the CT within 30 minutes and that’s when she told us he had extra fluid\/blood in his brain and what appeared to be a cyst.\u00a0 We would have to be transported to the Children’s hospital and see a Pediatric Neurologist.\u00a0 But she thought that the extra fluid and “cyst” could be pushing on something and causing him to be so sleepy.<\/p>\n An ambulance came and transported us to the other hospital.\u00a0 By this time my mother in law had gotten to our house to stay with the older 3 kids and my husband was with me and he had Piper so I could continue to nurse her.\u00a0 We got to the Children’s hospital around 10pm on Friday night and they started assessing him.\u00a0 They needed to get an IV started b\/c an IO can’t stay in for more than a few hours.\u00a0 They had taken him straight to the PICU and several nurses looked him over looking for a good vein.\u00a0 He had nothing.\u00a0 They ended up calling the Medivac team to come in and see if they could help.\u00a0 These women were amazing.\u00a0 They only poke him twice and they got 2 IVs started.\u00a0 Several Neurologists had come in and it was decided he had too much pressure on his brain for the fluid\/blood and he needed an EVD (Drain).\u00a0 They had ordered an MRI to be done but said it would be Sunday before they could do it.\u00a0 This is something I was not happy about.\u00a0 He was completely lifeless… something was very wrong and I wanted this “cyst” gone. The EVD was placed and he was finally able to rest but I couldn’t hold him anymore.\u00a0 Watching my baby lie there, completely helpless was the most painful thing I had ever done.\u00a0 As we waited for the MRI on Sunday my husband was bringing Piper to me every 3-4 hours so she could nurse.\u00a0 She couldn’t go in the PICU so I had to nurse her in the waiting room while my husband set with Harvey.<\/p>\n Around 1:30 Saturday afternoon Harvey moaned so I jumped up to check on him and he had dumped 58cc of blood into his drain.\u00a0 He had been putting out 10-15 cc an hour so that was a lot.\u00a0 I called the nurse and she was shocked to.\u00a0 The Neurologist came in and seemed baffled as to why he would have dumped so much so fast.\u00a0 I asked if we could please to do MRI now and he told me again that they couldn’t do it until Sunday.\u00a0 So I asked for a CT scan.\u00a0 Just to compare to the day before to make sure the “cyst” hadn’t ruptured or something.\u00a0 Thankfully he agreed to the CT scan.\u00a0 He was taken immediately.\u00a0 It was done pretty fast and they brought him back to the room and started hooking him back up when they came in and said, “Get him intubated, he’s getting an MRI NOW!”\u00a0 I don’t know what they saw on the scan but things got serious real quick.\u00a0 I wasn’t sure what to think I just knew I was glad they decided to take me serious.\u00a0 I may not know much but I know my kids and I knew something was VERY wrong.<\/p>\n They said it would take a few hours for the MRI results so I decided to try and get some sleep.\u00a0 At\u00a01:30am<\/span>\u00a0I was woken up to a room for of doctors.\u00a0 One of them started talking to me about what they saw on the MRI.\u00a0 Harvey had a brain aneurysm that had ruptured.\u00a0 Had he not gotten the drain 12 hours earlier he would not have survived the rupture.\u00a0 Nothing else they told me mattered.\u00a0 We needed to do whatever it was going to take to fix him.\u00a0 I was terrified.\u00a0 I called my husband and told him what I knew at that point which wasn’t much, he has an aneurysm and needs surgery within the next 12-18 hours.\u00a0 They were sending the surgeon to talk to me as soon as he had a plan.\u00a0 My husband and Piper came to the hospital so he could be there when the doctor arrived.<\/p>\n Apparently this isn’t something that happens to babies.\u00a0 This happens to adults in their 60s.\u00a0 The doctors were baffled.\u00a0 They had no answers as to why it happened but they knew it needed to be fixed.\u00a0 The surgeon talked to us about the risks of surgery and there was no question other than, “When can we do it?”\u00a0 We were absolutely terrified.\u00a0 We were told he would need therapy to regain strength and learn how to roll over again, sit up and crawl.\u00a0 He could lose most of his fine motor skills.\u00a0 On Sunday, September 21st Harvey was taken in for surgery.\u00a0 He was in surgery for 7 hours.\u00a0 They were able to successfully clip one of the aneurysms but there was another one.\u00a0 A much larger one but it was clotted and had no active blood flow so they decided to leave it and see if it would reabsorb like it was supposed to.\u00a0 We would follow up 10 days later with an angiogram to see if the surgery was successful.<\/p>\n The next several days were the worst.\u00a0 Seeing our baby intubated, his head cut up and beginning to swell.\u00a0 He no longer looked like himself.\u00a0 His eyes swollen shut.\u00a0 It took about 4 days for the swelling to go down before he could open his eyes.\u00a0 He still had so much fluid and pressure on his brain though.\u00a0 He would try to move his arms and he started kicking his legs.\u00a0 Two things I had prayed we would see again.\u00a0 Five days after his surgery I was able to nurse him for the first time.\u00a0 It had been a week since I had nursed him and I was anxious, scared, excited.\u00a0 I didn’t know if he would know what to do or not.\u00a0 But he latched on immediately and started gulping.\u00a0 So much so that he started vomiting.\u00a0 I was crushed but determined to get him better I asked if I could give him 1 oz bottle of the breastmilk I had been pumping.\u00a0 I knew his tummy wasn’t ready for the meal he was wanting.\u00a0 So over the next several hours I gave him a 1 oz bottle and he gulped it down.\u00a0 After he kept down a few I decided to try nursing him again.\u00a0 He nursed like a champ and kept it down!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n