CDH fight and journey home for baby Brayden Cooley

Hi everyone. As most of you know we are set to complete Krista’s pregnancy term in St. Petersburg, FL at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and deliver baby Brayden under the best care for his condition that we could find.

He has a severe condition of CDH (Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia) where many of his abdominal organs are in his chest cavity due to not having a fully formed diaphragm to maintain the separation of space. This causes the lungs to have minimal space to grow and perform upon birth. He’ll be taken into surgery fairly quickly after delivery to help rectify the positioning of everything and start the recovery process. A link below will answer many of the questions most people have at first.

We do have great insurance and don’t like to ask for help very often. As my head is spinning with all the information we need to comprehend to make the most informed decisions along with checklists and spreadsheets to plan our temporary relocation planned for a few months, I feel like we may never be ready for this. We head to FL at the end of July on a cross country journey with Ireland and the dog and cat. (Krista is flying). At this point, we don’t know what we don’t know and we don’t want to be surprised by a lack of preparation. We will both be continuing to work to keep everything moving forward the best we can.

We are looking for any positive support and are grateful for all that we’ve received. Many people have offered to help in many ways. We do not like to ask for much but thought we would throw this out there with so many wanting to help with the situation.

Thank you all for the support. It would be so much harder to go through this without all the family, friends, and network of great people we’ve had imprinted on our lives over the years.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gynecology_obstetrics/specialty_areas/fetal_therapy/conditions-we-treat/congenital_diaphragmatic_hernia.html