Day 19-An End and a Beginning

Today was and still is a blur. Tyler and I didn't sleep at all last night. We stayed up with our precious baby. He kept opening his eyes and looking at us. He would squeeze our hands and even smiled a few times. At 7am the surgeon came in and informed us he was pushing the procedure to 2pm, so then we were in for even more waiting! Our amazing night nurse, Nicole, decided to stay all day with us after having worked for 12 hours. Tyler and I took a few naps but Dr's and specialists kept coming in. The kids came up with my parents at about 1:30 and kissed and hugged baby Jake. Carlene (Tyler's mom) also came up. At about 2pm the surgeon came in and asked us what we wanted him to do if Jake didn't come off the machine very well. We had been discussing this all night long and we felt it was very selfish to try and keep Jake here, so we told the surgeon that we wanted him off the machine and if he did well, great, if not, we didn't want him to suffer anymore. The surgeon thought that was a good idea. (I don't know if I mentioned this, but the leg ultrasound, yesterday, showed no flow to his right leg and it was slowly dying as well). SO, they let us touch and kiss our little baby a little longer then they told us it was time to go. We went into the children's playroom and hung out with our kids. After about 1/2 an hour they told us they started. At one point Tyler and I both went into a different room. Tyler got up for a moment and all of a sudden my heart just sank and I felt a big hole in it and I knew something had happened and my baby wasn't doing well. 30 seconds later our nurse, Nicole, came to get us. She said he was losing lots of blood and his pressures were dropping. They had already given him more blood but the surgeon wanted to talk with us again. We were taken to a private conference room and the surgeon came in and told us Jake was bleeding from lots of places and they didn't know if they could stop it and asked if we wanted them to stop or put him back on ECMO. We decided to have them stop. They asked if we would like to go into the room and we both decided to go in. When we walked in we could see his little heart still slowly beating as they were stitching up his chest. after they stitched him up and cleaned him up a bit they took his breathing tube out and let Tyler and I hold him. We got to hold him as he left this world. IT was peaceful and quiet. His little heart stopped beating at 4:30pm. Our little Jake is no longer in any pain and doesn't have to deal with all of the problems his little body had. My parents told the kids and they all decided they wanted to hold him so they came in the room and each of them finally got to hold their little brother. It was a sweet and tender moment and I am so glad they were there. My parents and my mother in law also got to hold him. Even dead, you could still feel his spirit in the room and none of us wanted to leave. The staff was so great and compassionate. They finally had Tyler and I help them to bathe him and he even got to put on an outfit! It looked so cute on him. Then all the kids held him again. We talked about how Jake is up in heaven with Jesus and Grandpa Dennison and Mutti and Grampy and Grandma and Grandpa Palmer and how he doesn't have all of these owies all over him anymore. Of course the kids cried and so did we. His time was so short, yet he touched us all so much. We know that we will see him again and we will be together forever, but we can still be sad that we don't get to take him home right now. I am just in awe of the miracle and beauty that I have seen over the past 19 days. How blessed we are to have him in our family. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have that Jake will be reunited with his body, but it won't have all of the problems that he had. I am grateful to know that I will see Jake again very soon and that he is perfect. What an amazing spirit we had for such a short time.

We are home now, and nothing has been as hard as leaving him at the hospital and having to come home without him. I sit here typing and still can't believe it all happened. The past 2 1/2 weeks still seem like a dream. Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know what happened. We are wanting to do the funeral either Thursday or Friday. I will post when I know more.
Thank you all for your prayers. I know Jake fought so hard for us, so that we could have him here. I know your prayers helped to strengthen him and our family. I don't know how I could have gotten through this without everyone, even those I don't know. Please know that I will be forever grateful to all of you for everything you have done.

Baby Jake Alan Dennison January 21, 2009-Feb 9, 2009