Ellie's First Surgery!

Hello again everyone!

We just wanted to send a couple updates on our darling daughter, Ellie! We are completely smitten with her and can hardly begin to describe how incredible it feels to finally have her here with us. She smells absolutely divine and charms everyone she meets with her sweet demeanor.

In the past couple days, they've been doing lots of little tests to ensure they understand the full picture of her medical situation before proceeding with their plans for the next few weeks.  

The first update is that they have taken Ellie off the hormone that was keeping a small duct (called ductus arteriosis) open to help blood flow to the lungs.  The duct usually closes at birth, and they have been keeping it open artificially with the hormone treatment due to some of the heart problems they had seen in Ellie in the ultrasounds before birth.  Having done some more imaging in the last couple days, the cardiologists have assessed that the pulmonary artery (the one that takes blood from the heart to the lungs, and the one that they found was very small prior to birth) may actually be getting more flow through it than they initially thought.  Because of this, they are allowing the ductus arteriosis to close and seeing how Ellie responds to it.  The hope (and the initial indications so far) is that she will respond well, and that her lungs would continue to receive enough blood to keep her body well oxygenated.  So far things are looking really good, and the best part is that this might mean we can avoid the initial heart surgery they were planning on until they do the full heart repair down the road. This is just one of the many miracles we have already witnessed!

If all continues to go well with the heart over the next 12 hours, and Eleanor remains stable and well oxygenated, then they are planning to do the surgery to repair her gut (she has something called duodenal atresia) tomorrow (Monday) morning.  We met with the surgeon yesterday and are feeling very confident in her.  The stomach IS connected to the small intestine, but only a small little trickle is getting through a particularly narrow part of the small intestine, which means Ellie can't digest things properly right now. To fix this, they plan to do a kind of bypass surgery, where they will take the healthy part of the small intestine right after the narrow part and connect it to the stomach, so that fluid can skip past the narrow part and continue on down the digestive tract.  After a week or so, they will do another test to make sure things are getting through properly now and that there's no leaking, and if things are good, they will begin to feed her breast milk through her stomach tube! This will be very exciting and gets us one step closer to Ellie being able to eat and digest food normally--with no tubes! :)

Despite the fears that naturally creep in around operating on our (less-than-100-hours-old!!) baby girl, our little fighter continues to blow us away; she is so calm, strong, and stable through all this. So far she is looking very healthy, pink, and beautiful (and yes, we are completely biased)!  Looking into her sweet little face today, it was a struggle not to worry about tomorrow, but we are choosing to trust that God holds Eleanor in his loving arms and will protect her in ways we never could. Katelynn has been listening to lots of worship music while breast-pumping and this song has been a special encouragement over the last couple days. "I hear the Lord say, 'Little child, don't worry about a thing. Don't worry, don't stress about anything, cause I got you. I'm with you. I'm for you.'"

As we head to bed before a really big day tomorrow, please pray for the three of us in these next 24 hours, specifically for the following:

• Pray for Ellie, that she would know Jesus' nearness to her and love for her, and that her body would respond well to the anesthetics and the surgery itself. Please pray for no complications to come from surgery and that she would recover well and that no infection would take place.
• Pray for Dr. Bratu (the surgeon) and all of those that will be present in the Operating Room, that they will be well rested, alert, and steady-handed for the procedure on Ellie's tiny body.
• Pray for Katelynn and I, that we would have peace of mind and know that God is with our daughter, and that no matter what happens, she will be safe and warm in His loving arms. Your prayers over the couple days following the surgery are also appreciated; Ellie will be intubated and likely have very swollen skin when she comes back from surgery and we have been told to expect a lot more machines monitoring her, etc. We will also not be able to touch her too much for a couple days, so please pray for peace for us as we wait on holding our baby girl again!

Thank you all so much for your continued love and prayers for our little Eleanor.  She is a priceless gem, and has the most captivating eyes (that is, when she's awake enough to bat you a few lashes!).  We are so joyful to call her ours, and are so looking forward to being on the other side of this procedure, able to once again breathe in her sweet baby scent and shower her with kisses.  Blessings to each of you; we look forward to the days when we can introduce Ellie to so many of you!

Love and hopeful hugs,

David, Katelynn, and Ellie-gator Robertson!

P.S.  Thank you to so many of you who have reached out to us to encourage us, bless us, or express your cares and concerns about the three of us.  Many of you haven't heard back from us yet, and we just wanted to let you know collectively that we appreciate your messages very much!  We may not be able to respond in a very timely manner due to the circumstances and the amount of attention we are devoting to our baby girl, and we greatly appreciate your understanding if we don't get back to you soon.  Please know that your reaching out is well-received and cherished by us!  Thank you!