Esophageal Atresia

I decided today that I would start a blog to keep everybody up to date on what is going with little Zoey, and to post some of the thousands of pictures that I take of her everyday!

For those of you who don't understand what is wrong with her I thought I might give a brief explanation.
Zoey was born with a birth defect known as an Esophageal Atresia.  This defect happens to about every 1 in 4000 babies, and is most common in identical twins. There are different type of Atresia's and Zoey's is known as a "Long Gap" Esophageal Atresia.  Basically, her esophagus is separated into two pieces, and there is no connection between her esophagus and her stomach.  Therefore, she can not eat, or swallow because there is nowhere for it to go.  I'm sure you have all noticed the tube that is going down her mouth/nose.  This tube is a suction tube that will have to stay in until she has surgery to repair her esophagus.  It is there because she can not swallow her spit, so it is constantly suctioning her spit out so that she does not gag/choke on it.

When she was a day old she was sent in for surgery to have a feeding tube placed in her stomach so that she could be fed.  Usually Mic-key buttons are placed in babies tummies who can not eat or have a feeding tube put down there throat, but because zoey was never able to swallow any amniotic fluid while she was in the womb her stomach never was stretched out, which meant it was incredibly tiny and too little for a Mic-Key button to be put it.  After about 3 weeks however her stomach was finally big enough for the surgeon to place the Mic-key button in, which makes it a lot easier for holding her and bathing her because she does not constantly have a tube coming out of her stomach.
However, since putting the Mic-key in we have had constant struggles with it.  In the beginning it leaked so much that just about every bit of milk that was fed to her leaked out...this caused slow weight gain for quite some time.  Because of the leaking the area around the button became very red.  They doctors and nurses have been treating this for awhile now and it is slowly starting to look better.  Below is what a Mic-Key button looks like, a lot of times like in Zoey's case nurses will put gauze underneath and around them to help soak up some of the stuff that leaks out of them.