Baby Nathaniel is home after bumpy ride

(This update appeared in print in the Courier-Post's "South Jersey Living" magazine on Sunday, Feb. 26.)

Just over three months ago, I wrote a column here welcoming readers to the blog I would write to chronicle a dad's-eye view of becoming a first-time parent.
"It's going to be quite a ride," I wrote, "and I hope you'll join me . . . for all the absurdity and confusion that comes along with childbirth."
Little did I know just how much of an adventure my small family was about to have.
Little Nathaniel Hector Correa was born at 6:05 p.m. Feb. 2. We named him Nathaniel simply because we liked the name and Hector after my father, who passed away in 2004. Nathaniel's due date of Jan. 30 was my father's birthday. But while my wife Amanda and I were in awe of our beautiful son, the nurses quickly pointed out he wasn't crying very much and wasn't as pink as they'd like.
They called in a neonatal specialist to take a closer look. She said Nathaniel was probably just taking a little time to adjust. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
After several more updates, a cardiac specialist visited our room to tell us Nathaniel had a heart defect that is almost always fatal without proper treatment. In essence, he explained, oxygenated blood was not being carried around his body. Unoxygenated "blue" blood was making a loop around his body and back to his heart; while fully oxygenated "red" blood was making a loop to his lungs and back to his heart. But the two were not mixing in the heart, as they're supposed to.
The specialist told us Nathaniel was immediately being taken to a children's hospital in Delaware, and he would have open-heart surgery early the following week. This was at about 11 p.m., five hours after birth.
Throughout the pregnancy, there was no warning of anything being wrong. We were in shock.
The days that followed are covered in detail on my blog, A Dad is Born, on courierpostonline.com -- from our first opportunities to see him at the cardiac intensive care unit in Delaware, to getting to feed him for the first time, to handing our 5-day-old baby over to a doctor who would stop his heart and lungs and switch around major arteries.
After about two weeks of living in hospitals, Amanda and I returned home with our baby Feb. 15. We're still giving him some minor medications, and his immune system is somewhat weakened. But we have our baby. And we have a whole new perspective on parenthood.
Sure, we want Nathaniel to stop crying; but we also can't help but smile that his lungs are strong enough to wail as loudly as he does. Sure, it's upsetting when he scratches his face a little bit; but it's nothing compared to the scar he has on his chest, and he survived that like a champion.
According to the doctors, Nathaniel should grow up like any other child now that he's had his surgery. There are no special dietary or activity restrictions. The only difference is he'll have regular cardiologist visits along with his pediatrician visits for a few years.
It's mind-numbing to think of what he's been through in such a short time. And that's just the beginning.
Mark Correa is the editorial page editor for the Courier-Post. He'll continue writing his dad's-eye chronicles of his son's life until at least his first birthday.