Sweet Baby Boy

It's a Boy!!!

Sebastian Alexander Ramirez Krouskop was born last Tuesday, March 13th, at 4:14 a.m. to my sister Carrie and Marte'. He weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz., and was 21 inches long. Unfortunately, he was immediately whisked to the NICU, and then transferred to Children's Hospital because he could not breathe. They found out later that day that his vocal cords are paralyzed shut. He was on a CPAP mask for a few days, but needed to be intubated by the weekend. Today, the doctors removed the intubation to see if the vocal cords might "wake up" on their own. Now we're just waiting to see. If it doesn't happen in the next couple of days, they may need to do a tracheotomy. Carrie did not get to hold her son until Wednesday night. When I visited that evening, she still had not held him. By the time I convinced her to just ask, his nurse was on dinner break. I made her ask the nurse in the bed across the way, but that nurse wouldn't say yes because she didn't know anything about his case. Even though I was determined not to leave without seeing her hold him, it was getting late (I had both kids with me, and we had not eaten supper yet), and I didn't know when his nurse would be back from her break. I had to leave. I came back on Saturday morning to spend as much time as possible and lend my support. She told me then that she did get to hold him when the nurse came back that night. I can't imagine what it must be like to not be allowed to hold your baby. Mine were both placed right on my chest in the delivery room. Morgan had not even been cleaned up yet! They did quickly clean Aidan up, but then wrapped him and gave him to me right away.








On Saturday, we had planned to stay overnight with Dad & Eva, but they called to say they were both sick, and we didn't want to bring germs in with us, so we called Heidi & Darren to ask if we could stay at their house. We're thankful they said yes - we didn't want to drive all the way home and back again on Sunday! While we were there, we decided that we would hold our own Sunday morning service in the chapel at the hospital. Morgan wanted to be responsible for looking up scripture to read, I said I would do the prayers, and we gave Aidan the job of picking out which songs would be played from my iPod. As we were setting up in the chapel, some people started coming in. I asked if there was a planned service, and they said yes. A few more people showed up, and we waited for a little while. However, no pastor came, and finally everyone left. The Smith family continued on with our little private service. I opened with prayer, thanking the Lord for allowing us to be together. Morgan read Mark 7:31-37 (The Healing of a Deaf and Mute Man) and Acts 2:42-47 (The Fellowship of the Believers). Aidan played "Awesome God" and "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High" on my iPod (through the earphones!). Then I closed with prayer, lifting up every child and family in the hospital, and specifically Sebastian's healing, and the souls of Carrie and Marte'. It was truly a special and beautiful time together, and we ended with a family hug. As I was writing a prayer request in the book in the chapel, Carrie peeked through the window at us, wondering what was going on, so we met for lunch in the cafeteria.








Tonight I called to see how he was doing, since they were supposed to take the intubation out today. She said he was doing ok when she left, but they won't know for a couple of days if they need to do the trach or not. Apparently, since the intubation tube was in for several days, the vocal cords are stretched somewhat. It will take a little while for them to go back to normal. Hopefully, with prayer, they will begin working then.