Spencer's Surgery is Scheduled

We scheduled Spencer's surgery for Tuesday September 1st at 7:30am. The orthopedist Dr. Cornwall comes highly recommended by everyone we've talked to. He specializes in hands and wrists, and comes from Children's Hospital, in Philadelphia.

The procedure is called Syndactyly Release, but is essentially just seperating his index finger from his middle finger which are now webbed together. The surgery needs to be done to ensure that both the index and middle fingers can develop as normally as possible. There are a couple other issues with his right hand. Over all it is smaller than the average baby's hand, but it is completely functional except, the Dr is a little concerned with the index finger and also thumb. The index finger is much smaller than the rest of the fingers and the Dr is worried that it may not be functional. The thumb is small also, but clearly functional, but there is not much space between thumb and index which could make it difficult for grasping objects.

But this first surgery will be to simply seperate the index and middle, which will also involve a skin graft (from the elbow) because the remaining skin on the inside of the fingers is not enough to cover the incision.

We'll then wait 12 to 18 months to observe the development of index and thumb. Depending on how that goes there could be another surgery scheduled which could be potentially an amputation of index and perhaps some reconstruction of thumb area to give the thumb more room for movement. This obviously our biggest concern. So I ask for all your prayers for Spence's hand and safe surgery.

Spencer Wayne White

The newest addition to VCC tech team joined us Monday, March 2, 2009 at 1:45pm. He arrived weighing 7 lbs and 3 ounces and was about 20 inches long. He arrived much earlier than expected as Steph didn't have time to receive the epidural.

This is how it happened: At 5:50am Steph was 1cm dilated. They gave her Pitocin (labor inducing drug) at 6am to begin contractions. Her water broke about 6:30am. We didn't see the doctor since about 10am, when he dryly said "you might have this baby before noon, but you also might win the lottery". I think he thought he was funny.

Now, because of the risk of infection after the water has broken, the doctor didn't want to needlessly check her cervix. So nobody checked her cervix until 1:30 when they realized that not only was Steph fully dilated but that the head was right there. The nurses began to hustle around to prepare the room b/c upto that point nothing was ready.

They also tried to track down the anesthesiologists for the epidural, but apparently was already giving an epidural to someone else at that moment.

The nurse even was a little concerned that she may have to deliver the baby if they couldn't get the doctor in time. She asked Steph to push once to see how close delivery was and immediately yelled; "stop!" They we're able to track the doctor down and he walked in dressed in his street clothes. He asked if he had time to change into scrubs and the nurses all exclaimed "No!" They threw a gown on him he came over and asked Steph to push once and here came Spence!

Steph did great during labor. She kept doing the breathing excercises like the classes said to, and I guess all that stuff paid off. She is doing very well. The Pregnancy Induced Hypertension pretty much subsided immediately following labor, so that was great news.

Life throws a curveball: One thing that I haven't talked about at all is the surprise we received when Spence was born. He came out very healthy, good color, good muscle tone, great lungs, but right away we noticed there was something wrong with his left hand. In fact, there are no fingers on his left hand. Which pretty much feels like a punch in the gut. Steph and I always joked that we didn't care about the sex of the baby as long as it had "10 fingers and 10 toes". So we are still processing that. The doctors speculate that his hand may have gotten caught in some amniotic material somewhere in the pregnancy and was kept from developing properly. But they are also going to check for the possibility of it being a genetic thing but we'll see.

We couldn't love this little guy more, and we are super excited he is here, but we're unsure of what challenges this lays ahead for us and him. I have faith that everything will work out fine and for the best but the unknown, really has us concerned. As always we appreciate your prayers