Category: Esther

After Esther passed away they cleared out all the extra equipment, extibated her and swaddled her.

The kids woke up and Dave brought them to see Esther and we explained what happened.

We needed a break, so we went to have breakfast and played a little with the kids. After that, we went up to Esther’s room to gather her  things. We wanted to get out of the hospital, so we packed up all of our things from the hospitality house and booked a hotel in Grand Rapids.

Atreyu had a tough time saying goodbye to Esther and continued to ask questions about her. It was hard to explain over and over again that Esther had died. The questions are less now and it’s a bit easier to explain. He now just says that he misses her and I remind him that we all do. Ezra asks a few questions, but mostly just repeating what Atreyu has said.

We headed back up to Traverse City the next day and found a place to stay. Before we left, we packed up our house and moved out knowing our new rental wouldn’t be ready until the end of August.

Dave took the week off from work so we could spend time together. We caught up on some missed summer by going to the beach and the drive-in. He’s back at work now and we are starting to get back into our routine.

I am thankful to have Dave around. He has been handling things with Esther. We had her cremated and will have a memorial service in a few weeks. I can barely think about it long enough to plan things. But I will let everyone know when we plan to do it. We will probably be able to stream it online since we know there are many friends and family who would like to be there but can’t be.

We are trying to find a new normal and for me it feels like I am just going through the motions. Time just seems to pass without me noticing. I was going to post this a week ago but somehow a week went by without much notice.

I haven’t been looking for grief support but it just seems to find me. While I was looking at some homeschooling blogs I discovered another mother who had lost a child. She had these post and found I related to much of what she was writing about.

Here is her post called How to help a grieving friend

We are able to receive mail at our new house even though we haven’t moved in yet. Our new mailing address is,

Hannon, 777 Fox Hunt LN, Traverse City, MI 49686

We still have our PO Box and have been getting our mail from there and soon it will be forwarded. Thank you for all the thoughtful cards you have sent. I tear up reading them thinking of all the people who care about us and Esther.

I probably won’t be posting much anymore, but thank you for taking the time to follow along in our journey.

 

Today Esther had surgery while on ECMO.

She had a good night, her chest tube did not bleed at all. When her surgeon came in this morning she was very surprised at how well Esther was doing.  Her doctor said whatever we did last night, or prayed, worked. Praise God. Hopefully God continues to work and heal Esther!

They spent the morning prepping her. She needed to be on the ventilator for surgery and she handled that transition well. They headed down around 9 and took about 45 mins to set up. During the surgery they moved all her insides down and put a patch where the diaphragm would be. It all took a little over 3 hours. The doctor told us that she had everything up in her chest. Her stomach, intestines and part of her liver. Having her liver in her chest is a severe case of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. While your intestines and stomach are soft the liver is hard and makes lung growth much more difficult. Her diaphragm was mostly gone. They use a gor-tex patch where her diaphragm would be. Normally, as a child grows the skin attached to the patch will grow with it. Since Esther had such little diaphragm she will probably need another surgery as she grows.

We are very thankful with how well the surgery went for Esther. 24 hours after surgery we are on watch for bleeding. She is still on blood thinners so it is a high risk. In a day or 2 they will aggressively try to get Esther off ECMO.

Right now she still has the support of ECMO and I am praying this will make recovery from surgery easier. All on hopes that she can seamlessly come off of ECMO soon.

Please continue to pray. Dave and I had such peace today. While we are so concerned for our daughter we also feel so comforted by God and find such peace in that.

Esther, before she went down for surgery.