Life in L'ville: March 2009

God has taken us on a very different journey in bringing our son home. This post is long in coming, because a lot has happened in the past month. Here is a letter that we sent out to our church to let them know what was going on right around the time Daniel was born.

Thank you so much for your faithfulness in praying for us for this past week. It has been so comforting to know that our God is in control and that He has a plan for His glory to be displayed in the most unexpected ways. This is a letter letting you all know what has recently transpired in our lives and how you can pray for us.

I (Amelia) am doing so much better the past few days than I had been doing the end of last week and weekend. While I was giving birth to Daniel I had to be put on medication that was supposed to keep my blood pressure down (the concern with my blood pressure being high was the risk of my having seizures), because it was still very high when they began the inducement of labor. This medication was given in order to relax my body and thus lower my blood pressure, but a side effect was that it also makes contractions stop. As a result, they had to put me on another medication to keep the contractions going. We praise the Lord that I was able to deliver Daniel without having a C-section, which this was my number one desire (apart from a healthy baby and healthy me). After Daniel was born, I had to be kept on the medication for my blood pressure for about 24 more hours. This medication made me feel like my whole body was on fire and I could barely lift my arms and legs; this meant that the medication was working, but it made it very hard to do anything but lay in bed. Even while on this medication, my blood pressure would rise if I just sat up or tried to talk too much. Friday morning they stopped the medication and moved me from the room that I had delivered Daniel in to a regular post partum room. Even though my blood pressure was a little bit better, I still could not sit up or talk for long because it would make my blood pressure rise. We are thankful the Lord has begun lowering my blood pressure via a blood pressure medication pill that I will probably be taking for the next month or so.

Ways that you all can be praying for me specifically is that I would be able to get better rest. We do praise Him that I was able to sleep for 4 1/2 hours straight last night. (I have been pumping milk for Daniel and this has been tricky to figure out how to organize my day around sleep, eat, pump, and feed Daniel).

You can be praying that I would not worry about my blood pressure or about Daniel’s health. Sadly, I default to worry about what has happened or about what is going to happen rather than trusting our sovereign Lord. Trusting in the Lord would be my number one prayer request.

Now to tell you about Daniel, we praise the Lord for his life. Because of my having high blood pressure, which is a symptom of pre-eclampsia, I also had intrauterine growth restriction, which caused Daniel to not be able to grow. We praise the Lord that Daniel was able to withstand labor. For about the last 5 minutes of my pushing, they could not find his heartbeat. I did not know this at the time, but I could tell from the way they were telling me to push that it was very important for him to be born as soon as possible. The cord was wrapped one time around his neck as well, but once he was out he was fine. We are so thankful that even though he is small, he is definitely a fighter.

Because he is small and what they call a “late preterm” baby, he has had trouble knowing how to suck, and we have been concerned that he get enough to eat. I am planning on nursing him, so we did not want to confuse him with a bottle. My mom and the lactation consultant have taught us how to “finger feed” him, which means that we have a bottle that has a tube attached to it. The end of the tube gets taped to the pinky finger on which Daniel then sucks. In the 6 days that he has been eating this way, he has learned to suck a lot better and he has started gaining weight. We praise the Lord for this visible progress.

Daniel has had some trouble with jaundice because his bilirubin level has been high, which has kept him in the hospital longer than we expected. I think since Saturday (the days run together!) he has been off and on in the ultraviolet light that helps lower his bilirubin. We found out this afternoon that he will be under the bilirubin lights until 10 pm tonight, and then (if his levels are down) he will get to go home in the morning. Lord willing, he will see the pediatrician tomorrow morning. Even though I have been officially discharged from the hospital, they have let me stay here in a room right next to the nursery for free. We are very thankful to be able to stay close by to Daniel.

You can be praying that his bilirubin would not go back up whenever he is discharged and that he would continue to eat well and gain weight.

For Joshua, you all can be praying that he would be able to get rest as well. Pray that he would be able to balance work, school and taking care of us.

We would love to start having visitors; hopefully that will be when we get home in the morning. If you are really eager to see us, you could still see Joshua and me tonight—even though you probably will not be able to see Daniel. We are at Clark Memorial Hospital (Jeffersonville, IN) in room #4410 (remember, we are not actually admitted into the hospital, so you might have to hunt down the room number on your own!). If you choose to come by our apartment, please call beforehand so that you know we are at home. Amelia’s cell is 214-282-4780, and Joshua’s is 972-217-9364.

Thank you for all your prayers and thank you for understanding my need to rest so much and not have people come see us. We are so thankful for all of you and for all your prayers.

I don’t think we have had time to get our pictures off of our camera, but there should be a picture on this website, www.our365.com on which you should be able to do a search by our last name and see our little guy.

That's the end of the letter...we found our two days after we got to take Daniel home, that he had a narrow aorta and was going to have to have surgry to repair it. That as a hard time as well. Our son was so little and the thought of him having hart surgery was scary. The Lord has been so good to us in this though. We had great doctors and nurses and we had so many people praying for Daniel. We know that Daniel was then and still is in the Lord's hands. Daniel is two weeks out from having the surgery and he is doing really well. We went to the cardiologist today for a post operative checkup. The cardiologist said that he is very pleased with how Daniel is doing and he is very confident that Daniel is not going to be affected by this any more in his life. Another exciting thing to me was that they weighed him and he weighed 5 lbs 11.5oz!!

Here are some pictures of him!