Might as well start at the beginning

Well Mom, you said that I should write this all down before I forget it. So here it goes. On October 7th at 1:30 AM I started having Contractions. I wanted to wait to wake Joe up until they were ten minutes apart. That surprisingly only took 45 minutes. Now at about 2:15 am we are packing our hospital bag frantically and heading to the hospital. But not before Joe got his coffee. Thank god Dunkin Donuts are open 24 hours. By the time we filled out all the papers, and got into our room it was almost 4:00 am. I then got an epiderdal, and fell asleep for the next two and a half hours. When i woke up my mom was in the room and I was starting to feel alot of pressure. Not long after I started pushing. Brodie was born at 8:30 AM.The First thing he did was stretch his arms up by his face, and that's were they stayed for the rest of the day. Brodie was not a fan of being bundled.

Everything was perfect for about 24 hours. We had lots of visitors and Little Brodie turned out to be quit the entertainer. On October 8th his pediatrician came to see him. Dr. Cohn thought he heard a slight heart murmur, but assured us it was nothing to worry about. However to error on the side of caution he ordered and ECHO. That was when we found out that Brodie was born with a single ventricle Heart and would require surgery. The next 24 hours was the scariest time of my life. He was immediately transferred the Christana's NICU, where he waited to be transported to another hospital.

We Arrived at A.I. Dupont children's hospital where we met Dr. Goudy who is now Brodie's Cardiologist. Everyone in the hospital were unbelievably nice to us. We were given a room in the Neo-natal cardiac center. Joe and I were able to stay there and have Brodie in our room, So even though we were in a hospital, we still got to be a family

My mom had only planned on being in town for a week, but she spent every day that she was here with us at A.I. Dupont.

After about a week at Dupont, they told we could put our own clothes on Brodie. That was a big day for us. I think I was ready to burn those hospital gowns. This was Brodie's first outfit. It lasted about five minutes, then he pooped on it.

Brit came to visit me as often as she could, which broke up the solitude of being stuck in a bright yellow room that was 30x40 feet. At this point it began to feel like we were in jail.

Finally after days of complaining, they told us we could leave the Cardiac center as long as we stayed in the hospital. This was probably the most exciting day of my life. For the next few days Brodie lived in his stroller.

Before we knew it the Cardiac center felt like home. Joe was riding everyday, because Dupont was only about 15 minutes from Delaware park. At this point we had been in Dupont for over two weeks, and they had finally scheduled Brodie's surgery

After surgery Brodie spent 5 days in CICU. We were grateful to be out of surgery, but
frustrated because we were not allowed to touch him. Joe and I spent about 20 hours a day in there sitting next to him.

Once he was able to come back to our room, we had about 5 days worth of holding to make up for.

We had hoped to be home before Halloween, but we weren't, so we got dressed up in the hospital anyways.

On November 2nd we were discharged and got to bring Brodie home for the first time. Soon after his wound had closed up, we got to give Brodie is first real bath. This quickly became his favorite activity

Our little apartment was pretty crowded, so tummy gummy and sweatpea went to Florida to live at grandmas.

Being in the hospital, meant lots of visitors and lots of gifts. This kid now officially has everything you can think of.

So now Brodie is fully adjusted to being home. At 7 weeks old, he started sleeping through the night. and at 8 weeks he reached 8 lbs. He is spoiled rotten and cracks me up all the time.