Sunday night

A quick update.

Today has been more of a waiting day after the feverish pace of yesterday. Finley was put on an EEG to monitor his brain activity for 24 hours. He is about 3/5 of the way through that now. The good news is that it appears that the seizures have been stopped (this is not official, but is what the nurse said the neurologist said when he did a quick review - hey, we'll take it). They gave him two different medications to control the seizures and forgot to space them, so they are not entirely sure which one has stopped them, so that will be resolved in the next couple of days. Controlling the seizures is clearly job 1, so it will be very good news if the 24 hours of monitoring reveal that they are indeed under control. Next steps will then be to try to figure out if there are other things wrong with his brain. He will likely have an MRI in the next few days.

The negative of the EEG is that it means we can't pick him up. I got to change his diaper today, but we have both missed the chance to hold him in our arms that we thought we might get today.

We do not really have any sense of what timelines to expect, but tomorrow should bring more clarity as some of the key players return to work. We expect that Robyn will be discharged in the early afternoon and we have yet to decide exactly what we will be doing for the next few days. We will definitely be at the hospital almost non-stop, but we will likely go home to sleep.

We have been so moved by the overwhelming support from all of you. Thank you thank you thank you. It has been a very emotional day for both of us. We are sorry that we can't speak to everyone, but we are waking up to the reality that Robyn really needs to take care of herself and rest. She is still doing really well, but she is tired. And she is going to need her reserves for when Finley turns the corner and needs her breastfeeding him. So we are going to try to have her get some solid sleep between now and the morning.

We will continue to update and you will definitely have some pictures by tomorrow evening.

Thank you for your love and support. It means the world to us.

Love,

Kevin (for Robyn and Finley)

Sunday morning

Hello All,

We were able to get a bit of rest last night and have been shown a "resource room" in the NICU that is giving us this computer access. We were hoping to be able to share some pictures, but can't get the interface between card and computer to work. We will pass those on as soon as we can.

We will go back to yesterday afternoon just to be sure everyone has the same info. Finley John Markle was taken to the NICU right after he was born at 3:28 pm. He weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 47 cm long. He has some dark brown hair. He was completely white and "floppy" when he came out after about 40 minutes of active labour by his superhero mom. They immediately took him and the NICU team came right in the room and got him breathing on his own. For those keeping score at home, his AGPAR score at 1 min was 1. At 5 mins it was 7. But he never started crying. And he began arching his back and stretching his limbs which they attributed to seizures. So they took him up to the NICU and gave him two drugs to help control the seizures. The drugs sedated him and he was able to sleep very peacefully. They noticed that there was bruising and swelling on the top of his head. They did not know what was causing the swelling or the seizures or if they were related, so they began looking at everything they could think of. They did a CT scan and found nothing abnormal in his brain and no bleeding or swelling in the brain. They then did a lumbar puncture/spinal tap to get spinal fluid. The preliminary results on that are good but there are additional cultures that will take some time for results. So the news continues to be good in that they are not finding anything that is definitely the cause.

They did an EEG to check his brain activity this morning. We just met with the neurologist and he is concerned. It appears that the seizures are still happening and they don't really know what is causing them. Some of the routine/basic things ( e.g response to certain stimuli and disturbances) were not what they would hope. So they are going to increase his anti-seizure drug (he was getting a "17" on their scale of "15 to 40", so there is plenty of room), and leave the EEG on him for the next 24 hours. Their primary goal at this point is to stop the seizures, so our hope is that the increase in the drug will do that at some point today.

We have been very blessed to have some fantastic caregivers along the way so far. The neonatologist that met with us yesterday was very caring and incredibly thorough in walking us through things. He will be back tomorrow morning. Finley's nurse last night in NICU was great. She bent the rules a little bit to allow Robyn to hold him for over an hour, which was fantastic. One of the drawbacks of the 24 hours on the EEG now is that we won't be able to hold him today. But we can be with him all day. He looks great (once you look past all the tubes and wires on him). The swelling on his head is not severe. And the rest of his body is perfect. He is absolutely beautiful (the NICU nurse said at 3 am that he looks like me (Kevin), so 'nuff said about the beauty). We haven't yet seen his eyes fully open, but it looks like they are big and blue like his Mommy's.

There is still every reason to hope that things will be fine. The neurologist today reiterated what the doctors had told us yesterday: seizures are not completely rare in babies and they can often be controlled and will stop. The neurologist this morning said that he thinks it is likely the seizures were happening in utero as well.

We appreciate very much your prayers on this. You can call if you want to (either 919-699-5116 or 919-699-5114). We may not be able to answer as we will be in with him as much as we can. We will try to get back on email when we can, too. We will see about getting our neighbour to bring a cable so that we can get some pictures out to you.

Robyn is doing great physically. She was walking around by 7pm yesterday. She has started to pump milk that will be given to Finley as soon as they want to try feeding him. We are hopeful that she will be breastfeeding him by Monday or Tuesday.

We are doing well. We feel very blessed to have such great care for him and we continue to be hopeful and pray constantly. It means the world to us to know how loved our little boy is by all of you already.

Please continue to pray.

Love,

Robyn and Kevin