Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement!
Berkley Milton Larson was born on 5/31/23 at 1:11pm via C-section and weighed 7lbs 12 oz and 20.5 inches long. He was born a chill dude, super happy, content, loves to be swaddled, enjoys a good nookie, easy sleeper and phenomenal eater by breast or bottle! He likes a good boob feed ;) No health concerns at the time of birth, we were able to go home after just 2 days.. mama and baby Berk were in the clear!
A little backstory of how Mom and Dad got here with Baby Berk... Brian and I have been trying to conceive for 4 years. We were fortunate enough to become pregnant twice in 2020, and once again in 2021, but unfortunately they all ended in unexplainable losses. The longest of the pregnancies was 10 weeks; a DandC was preformed. Berkley truly is a miracle to us :) We are beyond blessed to have him here!
Jump back to present day.... his 4th day of life, Berk was acting a little strange.. he was toooo quiet during his nap. Wasn't fussy after dropping his paci, and he was really cold all over. His temp at home was 93.7 degrees F. After advisement of Urgent Care we rushed him to Children's ER. It was like the ENTIRE ER staff was jumping in to help him... there were 3 then 1,007 people all moving around him talking through ideas while he was being warmed under heat lamps, poked, wires hook up everywhere, given oxygen and limp like a rag doll. I thought he died. Least to say, Mom and Dad were losing it. I couldn't stand listening to the beeps and alarms so I covered my ears in the hall and just paced back and forth as Brian called our parents to be with us... mind you I'm still recovering from surgery and on a great dose of pain medication.
Next thing we know we are being escorted to a NICU room with him. Berkley is less blue, wrapped in the blankets and under heat lamps. He stabilized. He is having every lab test done, CT scan, spinal tap, MRI, EEG monitoring, ANYTHING to figure out what the eff just happened!!
After a full day of being in the NICU, we finally have a diagnosis... Berkley contracted a form a herpes commonly found in adults, and when exposed to infants, it can become fatal very quickly. We are not sure how he contracted it. If left untreated it can move into his spinal fluid and cause long term developmental hardships for him. The other option was Berk would have died on the ER table... easily. We brought him in just in time to save his life... a true miracle baby. Odds were against him as we didn't know what he had yet.. but now we know, he is on antibiotics, breathing on his own, regulating his own body temp without heat lamps, eating mama's milk from a bottle (like a MF champ!!!) Our sweet boy is on his way to recovery.
We aren't out of the woods juuuust yet... they still have to perform another spinal fluid test to confirm if the herpes entered his spinal fluid. That will be completed on Tuesday 6/6/23. Stay tuned and follow along for more updates on Berk after this point!
Berkley goes home today!! He has his last treatment at 12p and then we’re out of here! We’re excited to be going home and hang out as a family with the pups! And hold him without cords, wires and IVs attached everywhere.
Thank you, everyone, for all of your love and support! It was felt by all of us, Berkley is thriving because of all of you 💞
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