History

Here are copies of the e-mail updates that I sent out originally (for those of you who I missed on either one).

Hi Everyone,

Alex and I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to send us words of encouragement and to remember us in your prayers (I know that I'm still missing many people with this e-mail, so please forward as appropriate).

Hannah's condition has improved in leaps and bounds over the last week (although she still doesn't have a middle name).

During her first day at the Odense University hospital, Hannah's weight peaked at 2950 grams (6.4 lb) due to a huge amount of swelling. She was retaining so much water that she couldn't open her eyes, or bend her arms and legs. She was having regular attacks where her heart rate would shoot up to around 300 bpm.

During the day on Monday, Hannah began to receive medicine to control her irregular heart beat, and a diuretic to reduce her swelling.


On Tuesday morning at 4:00 AM, Hannah had her last episode with a high heart rate to date (and hopefully ever!!!). During the day, a cardiologist examined her heart, and did not find any irregularities. It is his opinion that for the first few months, the medicine will control Hannah's heart rate, and as her heart tissue matures, she will most likely grow out of the problem. During the night on Tuesday, Hannah lost 600 grams of retained water--we saw her eyes on Wednesday morning for the first time since just after she was born.

Hannah had a very good day on Wednesday, and on Thursday, she got permission to come back to the hospital in Sønderborg. Since she's been in Sønderborg, things have been going better and better. She is now out of the incubator and in a special heated bed. Both Alex and I have been able to hold her for extended periods. The number of cords and cables attached to her has steadily decreased. She is eating more and more, and for a trial period is off of her IV drip (if she can digest enough milk to keep her growing, she doesn't have to get stuck again). Since 3:00 AM this morning, she has been breathing on her own--no extra oxygen, no machinery. She will still probably have to have her continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP for those of you who like acronyms) intermittently to give her developing lungs a break, but it's really great to see her doing it by herself for an amount of time.

Now, Hannah has to grow and mature. The doctors tell us to expect that she will be in the hospital for 4-6 weeks before she can come home. During this time, Alex is allowed to stay in a bed just down the hall so that she can be with Hannah as often as possible.

For those of you who are praying for us, please pray that Hannah will be able to digest more and more food and put on weight, that her heart will mature from the problems with irregularity, and that she won't experience any additional complications from her early birth.

To avoid clogging up the e-mail system to send further updates, for those who are interested in following Hannah's development, I'm going to try, within the next few days, to begin putting periodic updates out on the family web site (www.the-vardemans.net).

Also, in an attempt to keep my work and private e-mails separate, if you wish to reply to this update, please do so on my private e-mail address (I sent this from my work account because I don't have everyone's e-mail addresses on my home computer).

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Hi All,

I'm sure that I didn't get everyone copied that I should have (I don't have
all of the addresses on hand), so please forward on as you see fit.

For those of you who don't know, our baby was delivered by emergency
C-section on Sunday at 11:28 (exactly 7 weeks early). It took a bit of
doing, but they stabilized her breathing and heart rate, and transferred
both her and Alex to the University Hospital in Odense (which specializes
in neo-natal care). The baby (girl--sorry, no name yet, we're still
discussing that one), is overall in stable condition, but has problems with
an irregular heart beat. Most of the time, her heart operates fine, but
suddenly, without reason, it will jump up to around 300 beats per minute
(about double what it should be at). She has been receiving medicine which
is supposed to control the condition, and we're praying right now that that
will work. Also, there is a bit of a problem with retained water (she
have been receiving a lot of fluids interveniously, has a little trouble
peeing on her own, and the heart condition doesn't help things), so she is
quite swollen, and receiving medicine to help get the water out of her
body.

Once she is in a more stable condition, she will be transferred back down
to the hospital here in Sonderborg (the hospital in Odense is 2 hours drive
from Sonderborg).

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and we are looking forward to
the time when you can all meet our new daughter.