Kaleb Prinz: It's a Boy!!!! Kaleb Preston Prinz

Kaleb Preston Prinz

Born 8-29-11 at 7:09pm

Weighed 4lbs-10oz and was 17.7in long

Jenifer and I are setting up this blog so that we can communicate with everyone on the day to day life of our little boy. As many of you know, we found out at our 18 month OB appointment that Kaleb’s heart did not develop correctly. We visited many facilities and met with multiple surgeons and decided that Children’s Medical Center was where we wanted to be. Our first diagnosis through fetal echocardiograms was 3 surgeries to re-route the circulation of the heart. Unfortunately, the fetal echo process is very hard to read in utero. When Kaleb was transferred to Children’s on Monday night, they did a true echo and found that the heart had more complications than originally diagnosed during the fetal eco’s. Tuesday was a very tough day for us. The surgeons and cardiologists did not think that there was a chance to proceed and withdraw was the diagnosis. There was a blockage that has not developed which as been our little miracle. Kaleb has a strong will to live, and we have been given a chance to proceed down a wonderful, but hard path. Because Kaleb was premature, his weight has been the biggest concern and surgery is very tough. We will be proceeding with an aggressive intervention on Tuesday to keep two ducts open that allow oxygenated blood to the body. After the intervention, Kaleb will have to gain weight before surgery is considered an option. Kaleb started feeding, so weight gain looks very promising but could take 3-6 months. When that time comes, we will have 2-3 surgeries to fix the rest of the heart complications. Please pray for pulmonary arteries to be developed properly and not occluded. Pray for a successful intervention (catheterization) on Tuesday! We will try to post pictures and daily reports of Kaleb and his adventures, as well as ours. Living in the CICU is very different from the life you hope to have in the first days of life with your newborn, but we are loving every precious minute!

Please see pictures below of our first moments with him.

When he was first given to us...