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Tyler was born by c-section on the 14-5-10 (Friday). He scored 10's on his APGAR's but within minutes he started to sound like he was struggling to breathe so they whisked him away to SCBU to check him over.  A couple of hours later he was returned to me with a stridor, the paediatrician said that Tyler had Lyrangomalacia and he would have the stridor for around a year. Tyler was fine over night, feed well, and was officially discharged from SCBU Saturday morning and plans were in place for us to go home Monday. On the Sunday though Tylers stridor started to change in pitch and started to get worse, he was doing it while he was sleeping and feeding which he hadn't been doing earlier. The decision to ring the bell for a midwife was one of the hardest things I've had to do. Once again he was whisked away from me. He was admitted back into SCBU, his blood sugar levels were way too low and he wouldn't feed so he had to have a nasogastric tube inserted. Every morning the doctors did their rounds and every morning they said the same thing, lyrangomalacia and his feeding should pick up over the week. At a week old Tyler still wasn't feeding at all but were planning on going home on the Monday anyway.
That weekend though Tyler's stats went downhill and we were rushed up to Starship hospital Sunday afternoon. On Monday he went to theartre to have a look in his throat, when the nurse came to tell us after 10mins that Tyler was coming out of surgery I knew they had found something they weren't expecting, thats when we were told that he had bilateral vocal cord paralysis. They surgeon told us that this would fix itself and worse case scenario he would need ghe tracheostomy so we wern't to badly phased by it. However, 2 hours later another doctor came to talk to us starting with 'Tylers tracheostomy is scheduled for Thu...'  This definatly came as a shock to us as we had no idea he was going to need one  and wondered what had happened during those 2 hours.
Tyler had his tracheostomy at 2 weeks old, for the following week he was in PICU and then moved onto the ward where we were able to start learning how to take care of it. We were in PICU for 10 days and made it back to our hometown hospital when Tyler was a month old, we stayed there for one night and then I was FINALLY allowed to take my baby home.
We have been home now for a whole month and man have we been busy! So many appointments! Tyler still has his NGT but his feeding is starting to pick up now, hopefully will only need it for another couple of weeks.
We have our first appointment with the ENT on the 30th August to see have a look at the voicebox, I think it'll be hard not getting our hopes up though.

• Gender: Male
• Demographic Region: Oceania
• Siblings: One
• Medical Conditions: vocal cord paralysis

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1 year 30 weeks

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New Zealand