A year ago today

On April 12, 2009 we got home from our trip to Europe. The next morning I had to wake up super early to go to the fertility doctor. We had been trying for months and my hormones started getting the best of me so I figured it was time to talk to him. I was exhausted and very apprehensive about the visit. I had been to this doctor when I was younger so he could help me with hormone issues so I was familiar with the office and the doctor as well. But I had never asked him how my hormone issues would effect being able to get pregnant. I knew I could get any answer from...you will have no problem, to...you may not be able to get pregnant. I walked into the office, signed in, looked around and after trying to find a seat in such a crowded waiting room, I sat down expecting a good long wait. I immediately pulled out my Bible and just opened it not knowing what to do other than turn to God. It opened to a random page and I read..."He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the Lord." Psalm 113:9 As I read the word "Lord" they called my name. I had waited no longer than a minute.

I didn't even have time for everything to sink in. I just felt the Lord's presence with me in a powerful way. I was shocked. I guess I shouldn't be shocked by the work the Lord does in our lives but I just couldn't get over what I'd just read. How had I turned to that page, that verse and had just enough time to read it before they called my name? God. He is good and He was with me. During a time of uncertainty and questions He was speaking to me and giving me hope.

The doctor told me that day that I would have problems getting pregnant. I will spare you the boring details but basically from what I understand (which isn't much with medical stuff) the part of my brain that should tell my hormones how to work...didn't work. So they would have to start me on fertility treatments and just see if my body responded to them without my brains help. I started treatment the very next day.

Now exactly one year to the date later...Mckinley turned four months old and I can say that on my own accord I was a barren woman but I am in my home and a very happy mother of one amazing child. Praise the Lord!

Home sweet home!

Well, we have had Mckinley home for almost two months now and it has been incredible. She has pretty much slept the whole two months but just in the past week or so has been having much longer awake times. She is somewhere around 6 1/2 pounds and we almost never have to wake her up to eat anymore. She lets us know when it's time and we have found that her lungs have gotten much stronger! All things we are so thankful for. I am even overjoyed when I hear her crying. I'm just so thankful to have a child that I don't care if she cries all night and day. She doesn't fortunately, but even if she did it would be okay. I still daily get teared up when I look at her. I just almost can't believe she's real. She's home. She's healthy. She's adorable. She's...a miracle. When I go to bed at night I almost can't believe I get to wake up and do it all over again the next day. It seems too good to be true. I seriously love every single minute of it. I'm thinking I want about 15 children at this point. I'll have to check with Brandon on that one though :)

St. Patrick's Day was her due date and we celebrated that day! She was over three months old and we knew that day could have been a day of heart ache. We are just so thankful to God for blessing us with her. Since we've been home everything has really sunk in about what we have just been through. During a situation like this all you can do is take one day at a time. We found out I was in labor...we prayed and hoped it would hold off. She was born...they were able to keep her breathing and alive. We stayed in the hospital...we visited her and tried to understand the machines and risks that preemies have. We went home and went to see her everyday...we called every time they were checking her weight, met with the doctors, watched her progress, prayed for her health and life. We watched one tube or wire leave at a time and eventually...months later we got to welcome her home. It's amazing the grace God gives you in those situations. If I knew then what I knew now I would have been terrified. But God gives you one day at a time only what He knows you can handle in Him, and we are so thankful for that. Now we have really had the chance to just enjoy our sweet girl. We've been to the park...
Taken some fun Easter pictures...
And Easter Sunday was a precious time for us. We got to take her to church for the very first time. It was a sweet time holding her and worshiping and getting to celebrate the new life we have in Christ and the new life He has blessed us with.
A song we sang that morning seemed perfectly appropriate...
"What can I do but thank you
What can I do but give my life to you
Hallelujah Hallelujah

What can I do but praise you
Everyday make everything I do
Hallelujah Hallelujah"

Update from dad

Over the weekend Mckinley hit the number we have been waiting for which was 4 pounds and last night she was over 4 lbs 2 ounces which means she has doubled her weight! Very cool. She should be off of external heat any day now and will be moved to an open bed. Two criteria for bringing her home are checked off(or at least will be anytime now). The last thing we have to focus on is getting Mckinley to take all eight of her feedings from a bottle instead of through the feeding tube. Right now we are doing two bottles a day and those are always pretty sketchy. She has heart drops, breathing problems, spits up, and lets milk run out the sides of her mouth. A big problem has been that right when we start giving her a bottle she decides it is a great time to try and go to the bathroom. She has far from mastered that art and so trying to eat and relieve herself at the same time is just way too much for her to handle.

Although switching to bottles has not been the easiest process, we trust she will get it eventually. Hopefully as of today we are 2-3 weeks from bringing her home. She wasn't expected to come home before March 17th so late February or early March would be such a cool thing. We are really ready to get her home but thankfully it has been a positive wanting and not a bad thing so far for the most part. Kat has been amazing at keeping her own spirits up. Spending at least 3 hours in a windowless hospital room surely isn't what she was hoping for but focusing on all the blessings that God has graciously given us has made it pretty easy to keep our spirits up. Thinking back to the day when the doctor first told us Mckinley was going to come early and the difference in how I thought that would play out and how it actually did is a wild experience and always reminds me what a great situation we are in.

I posted this on Facebook the other day but Mckinley finally has true nipples. She was born so early that they weren't visible but over the weeks they have formed to the point that you can see them now. I know she will kill me one day if she ever knows I was so amazed by this but I just am. It just is one example of how we were able to watch a 26 week old fetus born far too early develop into a baby. Such a cool experience. If/when we get pregnant again and we make it this far we will be able to look at early pictures of Mckinley and really know what that baby looks like inside of Kat. That is just really cool to me.

Anyways, if you are wanting to pray for us one big prayer request is that we can progress to more bottles so we can get our baby home and stop having that feeling that someone is missing when we are at home.

Brandon

So many firsts...

In the past few weeks we have gotten to experience so many new things with Mckinley. The top picture is the first time we gave her a bath...which she LOVED. The next picture is her first bottle ever. She didn't love that so much. Preemies have a hard time with their coordination and being able to suck, swallow and breathe all at the same time. So her heart rate dropped a lot and gave us a good scare, but she is learning. She is now taking two bottles a day and needs to be taking all eight feedings a day by bottle before she can come home. The next picture is her first little outfit. We thought for sure she would be too big for it, but it fit her perfectly. And the last picture is the best because...she is breathing on her own! She still has the little feeding tube in but her big nose things are gone. The funny thing is she has actually done a lot better with no help breathing. You know how she has tried to take all of her tubes out pretty much since birth? Well apparently they made her so much more fussy that is was affecting her breathing and heart rate. When she wasn't trying to pull her tubes out anymore she calmed down and is sleeping and breathing much better. Her stubbornness is already proving to be a good thing. She knew she didn't need them anymore and she let the nurses know! She has also had two vision screenings and a hearing test and all the results have come back with no problems.

She is still doing better than anyone could expect. She's a month and a half away from her due date and is almost doing everything she needs to come home. All she has left is to be able to take a bottle for all of her feedings and then she is all ours! I don't know how to describe how blessed we feel. Looking back now I don't think I would change how things happened. I would have never chosen this path for myself, Brandon or Mckinley. I would certainly never have desired for my child to have to have struggled like she has so far. I mean it breaks my heart when I see her choke just trying to drink her milk because she isn't developed enough to know how to do that yet, watch her turn blue when her heart rate drops, not be held by her parents or anyone except once a day because it makes her burn precious calories, or see her fight all the tubes and wires all over her and sleep less because of it. She wasn't supposed to be doing any of this yet. I was supposed to be doing all of it for her but we are expecting her to do it anyway. It is hard to watch sometimes. I don't think any parent would choose this for their child.

But I think that is why God is in control and we are not. Even though she's had a rough start He is doing a work in her that even as her mother I could never have accomplished. Especially because as a parent you never want your child to hurt. So if I was in control and never let Mckinley hurt and just did everything for her she would never develop into the strong woman of faith God wants her to be. He is going to do so much bigger and grander things in her life than I would have even hoped for her. So I praise God that He knows what even a 2 pound baby can handle and hasn't expected more of her than that. And that this is just the beginning of a work that's bigger than me, Brandon or Mckinley and fits into His perfect plan. In the meantime He has been teaching me that we don't always get to choose how things are going to work out for us but we get to choose who or what we turn to when things don't go like we would hope. So on the days that we watch her struggle or just ache from missing her so much we have to make the decision to trust Him or break down. And I have to say...every day we choose to trust Him we find peace. Yes, the kind that passes our understanding.

What a difference a pound makes!

Mckinley is now 3 lbs. 1 oz. and we can see every bit of it. When we see her everyday it's hard to remember how small she was. Then one day we had another set of parents that have a baby in the NICU come by her bed and say...wow I can't wait until our child is that big. I couldn't believe it but looking back going from two to three pounds is huge for her. It's such a joy seeing her grow. Her heart murmur is gone (praise God!) and her breathing is progressing so quickly. She is on room air, not getting any oxygen and she is on level 2 for the pressure they are giving her lungs. Just last week she was on 4 and is working her way down quickly! She started by taking one little cc of milk every three hours and now she is on 28 cc's every three hours and gaining about an ounce a day. Hopefully next week we can try giving her a bottle which I can't wait for. Today Brandon and I get to give her a bath and we've never been able to do that before. We love every new thing we get to experience with her. We still kangaroo with her everyday and she's still pulling out all of her tubes. She's just great.

God also continues to use her in our lives in a mighty way. This is what God taught me through her just recently. It was a particularly rough day for her. So as I was holding her I told her that I knew it was so hard right now and that she was having to fight so much. But I told her not to give up. That we were with her and going to hold her and help her fight. That if she could keep fighting she would get to come home with us soon. We were getting together a beautiful room for her that had no beeping machines, no nurses talking all the time and waking her up, and no other babies crying. It was a place where her Mommy and Daddy could hold her anytime they wanted to, give her kisses and hugs and make sure she has everything she needs. And best of all she would be free from everything that made life so hard for her right now.

As I was finishing telling her this I felt God say the same thing to me and I believe He says this to all His children as we face the hard times of life...I'm holding you right now. I know it's hard but I am fighting with you. I am preparing a beautiful place for you where you will hurt no more. If you just keep fighting and stay faithful one day you will come home and find the perfect peace you long for. No more cancers, sins, diseases or loss. You will be free from these things and you will see me and be with me always.

I think having a child does give us a better understanding of God and how he loves us. Just like it breaks my heart to see her hurt, so it hurts His to see us that way. He hurts when we hurt and He holds us through it all. What a wonderful God we serve. And He is helping us fight through this time. It's hard to leave her there and we miss her so much when we are home. We have both said that we don't feel quite right when she isn't with us, like a part of us is missing. But it's almost been six weeks already and we know this is only a season. She will be home soon.

Another praise is she got to move to another room. The NICU is completely full right now and they are getting new babies in all the time. Out of all the babies in the room, Mckinley was the most stable so they picked her to move. We love it because it gives us a little more privacy and it was great to hear that she was doing so well! Overall, we certainly can't complain. She is beautiful, gaining weight, breathing well, learning new things, and loves to cuddle with us. And she loves to pose for pictures. Haha those are pictures we will always treasure. It's hard to have a heavy heart around her because she always makes it light.

Well, we had a wonderful first Christmas with Mckinley...and New Year's. I thought this process would drag out very slowly but I can't believe how fast it's going by. On Christmas morning they weighed her and for the first time she was above her birth weight. We said she was just trying to give us a Christmas gift, and we loved it! Now as I'm writing this she is all the way up to 2lbs 6 oz! Overall she's been doing well. They did have to give her a second round of treatment for her heart murmur and they said they can't hear it anymore but we are waiting until Monday to hear back from the cardiologist to find out for sure if it's closed up.

It's been amazing to us that even though Mckinley was born so early, she is so perfectly formed. Everything is just extra tiny. But it's also amazing that she already has a little personality. Well, even though she's little I don't think anyone would call her personality little. We've had a lot of different nurses and even nurses that aren't assigned to her tell us the same thing. They use different words but they are all similar...stubborn, scrappy, fiery, fireball etc. We see it so clearly in her as well, and it makes me laugh. As you can see in the picture she does NOT like all the tubes and wires connected to her. So she found a solution...just pull them out. She has even pulled out the feeding tube that goes all the way into her stomach. The breathing tubes took her a couple days to figure out. She started to pull on the tape on her cheek, but didn't have the strength to pull the tape off. So she eventually learned that she could get them out by pulling directly on the part in her nose. The nurses used every tape they could use on her and put it on in every way they usually do, but eventually had to start inventing new ways to put the tape on because she kept figuring it out. She's stubborn as she can be, and they are just hoping her strength doesn't catch up with her will at least until she doesn't need all of that anymore.

But we thank God that she is like that. The nurses keep saying just wait until she is two or three years old, or even worse...a teenager, but we just love it. That girl is a fighter, and while that may be hard when she is older and strong-willed, I know that God made her like that so she could not only fight through this, but eventually use that for His glory. I knew she was doing well and was fighting hard, but I don't think I knew how well she was doing until I went to my doctor this week. He was talking about the precautions I would need to take during my next pregnancy because in his mind this was "worst case scenario". He said that we couldn't even say...well at least if I can make it to 26 weeks again...because he said that he would never expect another baby to do as great as she was doing. He said it was a pretty rare case. He came to visit her the day before and was shocked to see and hear how well she was doing. We are just so thankful. If she was even a couple weeks earlier she wouldn't have had a chance, but God brought her just far enough along and gave her that strong will so that she could survive and start having her testimony shared and already start telling of the power of God. She's one amazing, scrappy little girl with already such an amazing story. Praise God.