First Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! Today was our first Easter with our two little girls.



Abigail is giving the nurses and doctors fits. Her potassium levels are elevated and they are trying to get that under control. Her blood sugar is also all over the board so they have given her insulin for that. Her blood gases were doing really good until recently and so now they are going to up her settings on the respirator. She looks great on the outside, its what's happening on the inside that is the problem.



Emma is getting ready for surgery tomorrow. We are hopeful that all of the other problems she has been enduring will be helped with this surgery. She gained 90 grams last night and her stomach is swollen which is not good. They took an ultrasound of it and will have the results of that in time. They have given her Lasix to try and get some of the fluid to leave her body, and we are hopeful that this will help.



Sometimes when you are going through such a hard time in your life, all you can think about is yourself, or how hard you have it. We met two other NICU parents in the parents' room today that have been through a difficult time. One of the parents had twin boys at 27 weeks - which we would have been blessed to have, yet one of their twin boys had an aneurysm in his lung, and he would have been on life support for the rest of his life. The parents had to make that horrible decision to discontinue life support on him, and he passed away. As is the story in the NICU, every child is different, and his brother has no problems at all.

Another woman had a baby boy 7 years ago at 42 weeks, and he was taken to NICU because he was born with cancer. He had a baseball sized tumor behind his liver, and he had 8 to 10 "blueberries" or cancer spots just under his skin. These blueberries would increase by 10 every day. They type of cancer he had was inoperable, so they had to give him chemo at the age of 17 days. Remarkably, 7 years later he walked into the parents room to see his mom, looking like a normal kid that never had a problem. This mom is back in the NICU with a little girl born 8 weeks early who is doing good and should be released in the next couple of weeks.



You meet people at different times in your life that remind you of the blessings that you have in your life and that when it seems too unbearable to continue, others have suffered so much more. We pray for these two families that they may find some peace and healing through their faith and their families.



It's raining and cold here in Kansas City, so we decided we would let the girls hunt for eggs in their incubators this time. Next year I can't wait to loose a night of sleep helping the Easter bunny hide their eggs all through the house.