Prayers in Action

Everly made excellent progress yesterday and today we received the biggest piece of news yet.  The chromosome test that we've been waiting on for 7 days came back NORMAL!  This is a huge relief!  Matt and I both needed to hear some good news.  Our prayers are being answered.  Dr.'s are drawing additional labs today to rule out more specific chromosome disorders, but Matt and I both feel optimistic that Everly does not have any chromosome disorder.  Baby girl is also completely off of all iv's (including her glucose) and her lungs look nice and clear so she is being weaned off of her oxygen as well.  Everly does continue to get glucose testing every 6 hours, rather than every 3, just to make sure her levels are maintained where they should be.  Dr's will monitor her sugars for the duration of her stay.  The last hurdle is getting her to eat from breast or bottle without problems for 48 consecutive hours.  We are so pleased with Everly's progress and are grateful for all the prayers, love, and support that we have received on her behalf.  We have truly seen charity in action.

Not Just Another Rainy Day

Both of my babies were born on rainy days.  So when I saw the forecast for rain in the coming week I had a hunch that baby girl might be making her big appearance.  And sure enough I was right.  Let me tell you how it all went down.

Last Sunday I woke up feeling a bit off.  Not good, not bad, just off.  I knew my body well enough to know that this was probably the brewing of labor.  We went about our day as normal.  Went to church, came home and ate lunch, hung out, and then I took a little snooze to try and rest up.  I woke up to some bleeding so I put a call into the dr. to get assurance that this was ok and nothing to be concerned about.  The on call dr. confirmed that I was probably in the early stages of labor.  She said I could start walking to speed up the process or rest and drink water to prolong it.  Matt had one of the busiest work days he's ever had scheduled for that Monday morning, so we rested up to try and push off the labor process just one more day.  But I knew our plan wouldn't work.  We went to family dinner, came home and put the kids to bed, and got some bags packed just in case tonight was the night.  By 11pm I was having regular contractions about 5 minutes apart and the bleeding was increasing.  I decided to try and sleep through it and went to bed.  At 2:30 the contractions awoke me from sleep. What a better time than now to get a few things done right?  I unloaded the dishwasher, finished some laundry, and did a little Primary work.  At 4am I rolled myself back into bed to try and sleep just one last time, but there was no way Matt would let me go to bed.  He told me to just go the hospital because "We are not going to have this baby at home."  This is one of Matt's greatest fears.  I agreed and drove to the hospital.  The nurses quickly got me settled into the room, checked my progress (I was dilated to a 4), admitted me, got my epidural around 6am, and broke my water at 7am.  Matt  came to the hospital shortly following and by 10am I was dilated to a 10 and ready to push.  My dr came in and two pushes later baby girl came flying out in a gush of green amniotic fluid (meconium) that sprayed my obstetrician as if she was sitting in the front row of the Shamu show.  She was covered in poopy green amniotic fluid!  It was hilarious! Matt and I were literally on the verge of a laughing attack.  My dr. just stood in shock holding our baby girl.  Her face was priceless.  She will never forget that delivery thats for dang sure.  Thankfully my dr. had a great sense of humor and could laugh it off. My labor and delivery could not have gone more smoothly.  Baby girl was cleaned off, wrapped up, and handed over to me for a brief time (maybe 10 minutes in all) before the nurses decided to take her to the nursery to warm her up.  That was the last I saw of Everly for several hours.

The NICU dr. came to my room about an hour after delivery to tell me that my baby had been taken to the NICU for a couple reasons: low oxygen saturation levels, undetectably low blood sugars, and low tone.  I wasn't too concerned at the time but I realize that I was probably a little disoriented, which maybe was a good thing.  I was taken to a postpartum room and settled in for awhile until I could start to move my legs again (thanks to the lovely epidural that takes away all your pains but also leaves you bedridden for a few hours).  In the meantime Matt went down to check on Everly.  He got quite the scare when he walked in to see 4 nurses crowded around our baby trying to get her to breathe.  They were successful in getting her oxygen but Matt returned to my room quite shaken by the whole thing.  A couple hours later I was able to see her.  She had a breathing tube through her nose and was still gasping for air.  It was a sad moment but I knew that she was in good hands and had peace about that.  I returned to my room to recover while Matt and his dad gave Everly a blessing.  The following morning I awoke to my OBGYN sitting on my bed.  She had visited Everly in the NICU and had reviewed my charts to see if she could piece anything together in regards to her sugar levels.  At that time she also brought up other concerns about Everly.  The drs. noticed that she had a few physical features that could be telling of a chromosome disorder: low set ears, extra skin or webbing on her neck, and short fingers.  Once again I was a bit disoriented/tired and accepted the news with minimal concern.  Little did I realize what this could mean until later.

Fast forward a week and here we are.  Everly has made some strides in the past week, but progress is slow. There is a lot going so allow me to bullet point what's happening.

• Low Saturation Levels- her chest is "wet" or "cloudy" so she is back on oxygen and will be weaned off of it over the next 4 days
• Low Blood Sugars- she is on an extremely high concentration of glucose (17.5%) given through a central line in the belly button.  This is 3-4 times higher concentration than most babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes.  They are currently weaning her off of it but its a slow process because they don't want her sugars to drop too low.  Glucose blood tests are taken every 3 hours and as long as her levels are in a normal range (55-90) they can reduce her rate of intake.  If her levels fall below 50 they will take more labs to test all parts of the endocrine system.  This should give us some answers as to why she is hypoglycemic.  She has to be completely off of glucose and iv's and stable for 48 hours before she can go home.  
• Skin tag on right ear- Apparently the ears and kidneys develop at the same time.  Any physical differences in the ear is an automatic red flag to test the kidneys for potential problems.  She has something called a "duplex" kidney.  The kidney has one area where the bile filters into and Everly has two areas where the bile filters to.  This is not a major concern but she will need to see another dr. concerning that down the line.  
• Unfused or broken clavicle- Today we found out that Everly's clavicle was possibly broken during delivery (which is very common and painless) but most likely did not fuse together at all. We are not sure what the next step is with this. 
• Low set ears, short fingers, extra tissue around her neck- all of these physical features are a red flag of a potential chromosome disorder.  Keryotype testing was done last Wednesday and we should have the results back sometime later this week.  The geneticist performed a physical evaluation of Everly today confirmed the physical differences that the neonatologist noticed.  If the keryotype labs come back positive then she will be diagnosed at that time with whatever chromosome disorder she may have.  If it comes back negative, then further chromosome testing will be done to test for more specific chromosome disorders.  The Keryotype labs only test for the overall chromosome X.  
• Tachycardia- Everly has had an elevated heart rate for 2 days.  Dr.s took two heart echoes and thankfully they came back normal.  Her elevated heart rate is suspected to be caused by elevated amounts of glucose and fluids so they have reduced the fluids to help.  
• Feedings- Everly is currently getting regular breast milk + formula feedings through a feeding tube.  She breast fed well for 3 feedings but has been too stressed to do it regularly.  She needs to either be breast or bottle fed (or both) for 48 hours before she can go home.   

Now we just wait and pray that she makes improvements each day so she can come home a healthy baby. She is receiving excellent care from NICU doctors and nurses and we are at peace with whatever challenges our baby girl may have to face down the road.  We love her so much!

Any Day Now?

This pregnancy has been easy breezy up until now.  All of a sudden I feel gigantic and apparently I'm not the only one whose been noticing.  Multiple people have asked me if I'm due "Any day now?" When I have to respond with "Oh no.  Still 8 more weeks to go", I get some wide eyes staring back at me as if I might explode before I ever cross the finish line.  I went to my OBGYN this week and she confirmed that this baby girl is measuring two weeks big.  That doesn't change my due date however.  That just means a bigger baby for me.  Im hoping this little girl will spare me some discomfort and make an early arrival.  A girl can hope, right?

  

Virginia Visit

Our family vacation took us to Virginia this year.  California is normally our Summer destination of choice, but we thought we'd switch it up and head to the opposite coast for Matt's nephew's baptism.  We spent 6 days in good company with Matt's family.  The kids had a blast.  Brad and Mary's home is a perfect playground for kids, fit with a huge playroom, movie room, and awesome backyard.  Brad went all out for Ben's baptism and rented 2 blowup water slides, cotton candy, and snow cone machine.   Rylan spent the entire day outside playing and requested 10 blowup slides for his next birthday.  We have some high expectations to meet.

3 Generations at Ben's Baptism

I had the chance to meet up with my BFF in Philadelphia for a day.  Jill showed me what a day in the life of Jill entails.  She lives just a short walk from downtown, where we went to brunch, dinner and indulged in some famously delicious ice cream from Franlkin's Ice Cream Parlor.  Yum!  I also got a sneak peak of her new house.  Seriously, it's straight out of a movie it's so cute!  I always love seeing Jill and had a great time.  Wish I had a picture of Jill and I together.  This is the only shot we got, me standing in front of the original Anthropologie in Jill's soon to be hometown of Wayne, PA. Check out that belly. I'm huge!

A Day at the Beach

This weekend we packed up our minivan and headed to Port Aransas for our very first Texas beach trip.  I will say that my expectations were relatively low.  The thought of driving 3+ hours to get to a beach sounded like a lot of work after living just 10 minutes from the beach for most of my life.  That's why it took us so long to commit to doing a Texas beach trip.  Six years to be exact.  Port Aransas was not as easy on the eyes as California beaches, but I was pleasantly surprised at how family friendly this beach was.  The sand was very fine, which translates to softer to the touch, cooler on the feet, and more packed and easier to walk on.  The water was ridiculously warm and had a shallow shore that my children could walk out into for several yards before getting in too deep.  We had a great time playing in the sun and sand with our friends, Benedicts and Landreths.  

A Little Getaway

Matt and I had the luxury to get away for four days without the kiddos.  Our destination was San Diego, California.  We felt that it was necessary to have some time alone before we welcome another little one into our family. Our California visit was nostalgic, relazing, and absolutely necessary.  There is nothing like getting away for a time and leaving the laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, and church responsibilities behind.  San Diego was a perfect destination.  We have always wanted to explore the city and with a hotel right downtown in the Gaslamp District we had the perfect opportunity to do just that.  Everything we needed was right within walking distance, including great places to dine, shop, and watch movies.  Balboa Park, La Jolla, and Old Town was just a short drive away.  We also had time to visit Matt's cousin, Marisa, in Pasadena and my Aunt and Uncle, Rudy and Pattie, in Fallbrook.   It was a nice little getaway.

Can't visit Cali without hitting up In-n-Out.  We seemed to luck out with handicap rooms and table for this trip.

 Car shopping in La Jolla.  Matt found his dream car

The view from my aunt and uncle's home

Just Like Old Times

We had the pleasure of having our good friends, the Spicers, in town for 5 days over the weekend.  They are the rare kind of friends (although I will say that we are blessed to have a couple "Spicer" families in our lives) that everyone needs to have.  We could literally go without seeing each other for a year, reunite, and nothing changes.  Being around them is easy and fun.  No drama.  No judgments. No expectations.  No work involved whatsoever.  Just plain fun!  The Spicers just finished 3 years of podiatry school in Philadelphia and are now onto new adventures as they travel to Phoenix, AZ for residency.  Phoenix is still further than we'd like them to be but I think we are all hopeful that they will return to Texas for a job after residency.  For now we will just have to take our occasional visits and soak up as much Spicer time as we can.

This trip involved the following activities: Landa Park, golfing for the guys, the pool, the zoo, a little shopping for the girls, homemade fried ice cream, Blue Bell Italian Cream Cake ice cream, a stint of food poisoning (apparently no meat should be consumed even 1 day after expiration, lesson learned), South Riverwalk food trucks, Safe Haven movie, painting nails, lots of hang time, and nonstop playing for the kids. I've never seen Rylan play so well with anyone for an extended period of time.  Bentley, Tatum, and Rylan had a blast together.  Oh and Jennie even got a job while she was here. She mentioned that she wanted to get a part time gig now that both her kids will be in school. I threw out the idea that she should sell hardwood floors in Arizona and she was all for it.  We mentioned it to Matt and Damon and they were on board and excited for the potential to grow the Arizona market.  So, she met with Damon for a quick training and overview of the business, bought some shirts for embroidery, and is on her way to getting started when she gets to Arizona.  I'm excited to see what she can do!