NICU

Right after Ridge was born he spent a few hours in the NICU as they got him stabilized and got all the IVs in him to receive the proper meds he needed to basically keep him alive.  The most important medicine was called prostaglandin.  This kept his patent ductus open which usually closes shortly after birth.  Keeping the patent ductus open was the only way for Ridge to get some blood into the lungs so that it could be oxygenated and then be pumped into the rest of the body through the left side of his heart.  The right side of your heart pumps de-oxygenated blood into your lungs to get oxygen and since the right side of Ridge's heart didn't develop there is no other way to keep blood pumping besides keeping the patent ductus open. So that medicine really was his lifeline through his first week of life.
The plan was to put the catheter tubing in through his belly button so it could be a direct line into his heart. Apparently there are no nerve endings there either so this wouldn't hurt Ridge at all.  The problem is that Ridge only had a single artery umbilical cord instead of a double like most babies are born with.  This means they only had one shot to get this catheter in and often times they need both to be successful because one won't work well but the other one will.  They did try to go through Ridge's belly button but they were unsuccessful so instead they had to put an IV in each wrist.

Once I was done with recovery, my nurse wheeled me down to the NICU to see Ridge. It was a little overwhelming to see him with IVs and monitors all over him but it was nice to be able to really get a good look at his whole body and spend more than 1 minute with him. I look back now and think it's funny that I thought this was a lot of stuff attached to him!

 I could not believe how long his toes are.  This picture doesn't even really do them justice.  Beckett and Griff had short, stubby toes so this was a surprise.

I loved how Ridge was crossing his legs. Just chilling. He seemed pretty comfortable but it was all I could do to keep myself from scooping him up and snuggling him.

My mom and Gena were able to spend a few minutes with him too before they kicked everyone out to put in his neo PICC line and get him ready to go to the Congenital Heart Surgery Unit. The neo PICC was needed so they could have a central line going to his heart to give other medications since they weren't able to get the catheter in through his belly button. Because they needed to do this, Ned wasn't able to see him until later so I have no pictures of him with Ridge.