Here are my wonderful kids at an amusement park(I'm still working on getting the pics up), and yes, one of them is the one who has birth defects! We were learning something new about him on a regular basis for the first year he was with us. We learned about his scoliosis the day he was born, which was also the day we met "Dr. Grim." When he was just 2 days old, he had a ecocardiogram done because they heard a heart murmur. The doctor who read the film said his aorta was constricting and looked like it was going to completely close itself off. Life Flight arrived shortly to escort him to Primary Children's Hospital for further evaluation. It turned out that his aorta had merely redirected itself down the right side of his body, his left side is the location of his chest wall deformity. So what was the murmur? His PDA valve on his heart never closed on its own. He eventually received an operation to close the PDA, so it is no longer an issue for him.
We found out that he only has one kidney, and we knew that he had an abdominal hernia when he was born. The hernia was repaired when he was 10 days old. Those first 10 days turned out to be very interesting. How? Well, every time we changed his diaper, we had to change his clothes because they were soaking wet. It appeared that he was peeing all over his clothes, though we weren't sure how. You wouldn't believe how many people gave us advice on what we needed to do to keep him from soaking his clothes. He was our 2nd boy, so you would think we would know how to handle it, but we still kept hearing, "You've got to make sure the 'plumbing' is pointed in the right direction." No matter how often we told people that we had tried that, we kept hearing it. The other interesting thing during this time was his umbilical cord wasn't drying up like it should. Well the day that he was scheduled for his hernia repair they did an ultrasound. The amazing thing was, they could not see anything at first. Then they caught a quick glimpse of what was causing him to soak his clothes, and it dissapeared from view again. I know the medical term they used to describe it, but there is no way I can spell it. In short, his bladder was connected to his belly button, which obviously caused his wet clothes and his cord to not dry up and fall off. The surgeon repaired this at the same time as the hernia. I have to admit that I was beginning to question my own ability to put a diaper on a baby because it just didn't make any sense!

Wow this is only the beginning! I have so much more on that son, and on my wife! Life has been anything but dull for us, I hope it is interesting to you as well! Keep checking back for updates!