One Year Ago..

One year ago we were with Emma in the NICU going thru all sorts of x-rays and blood work and even more emotions. Just a few days before we were ringing in the New Year with her, thinking that we would be bringing her home by her due date for sure.

We had called that Saturday morning to see how her night had been and there was some concern because it seemed like she was taking a turn. She had blood in her stool, she was lethargic and her belly was distended. They were keeping a close eye on things to determine what the next course of action would be.

Because her belly was distended, she was having a hard time breathing so they decided to put her back on the ventilator. The next moments were some of the most terrifying moments of our time in the NICU and definitely in my life.

Dennis and I figured it would be no big deal to watch them do this and they did not seem to mind us being in there. Now we had seen them put an IV in her head and that was no picnic, nobody wants to see one of those sticking out of your babies head.
I do remember when Sam was in the NICU, the nurse mentioned that they sometimes have to do that if they can find a good vein and I thought how horrible that would be, never imagined I would have to see it in my daughter a year later.

So anyway, we were in her pod and they started to attempt to put her back on the vent and she resisted in a big way. She was going to have nothing to do with them putting that tube back down her throat. After a while, I noticed she was turning blue. That is when I lost it and had to leave. I was out in the hall crying and a nurse had led me to a room so I could sit down and have some privacy. Shortly after that, I heard a buzzer or something. It turns out that they had called a mini code blue for her and Dennis said it was pretty crazy. Just like that, there were a bunch of nurses and doctors in there to assist them. They had to paralyze her to be able to get her back on the vent. I can still picture her lying on the table all blue. It is something I would like to forget, but likely never will.

After everything settled back down, I went back in there to see where things were at. They were still taking x-rays a couple hours or so to keep an eye on her stomach. There was a perforation in her stomach wall or intestines and they needed to make sure that it did not get any bigger or we would be in trouble. They were trying to treat it with medicine but it did not seem to be working.

The next morning held many emotions as well. She was not getting any better and a decision would have to be made soon about whether to do surgery. It was agonizing to wait for the doctors to decide and there are no words to describe my relief when they went ahead and decided to do the surgery.

The surgery went very well and was over quicker than expected. The surgeon had said that sometimes there are areas that are questionable and they need to go back in and see if they need to remove more of the intestines, but that was not the case with Emma. Everything was either pink(meaning it was good) or black(meaning it had died) so they knew what they needed to remove.

They had given her an ostomy to give her intestines a chance to rest and heal. The down side to this was that she would need 4-6 weeks to heal and then they would reconnect things and see how things would be working. So being home by her due date was a no-go, but this ended up being a blessing in a way because shortly before her surgery to reconnect things, we ended up meeting a couple from Madison who had a baby on Valentine's Day and she needed to have surgery on her heart at 8 days old.
(Check out her story at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/nevaehw.)

God always has a way of working things out. It had seemed that whenever Emma had something going on with her, she always had her 3 primary nurses working with her. That was always such a huge blessing because they knew her and what was normal for her. If we had been able to go home by her due date, we never would have meet the couple from Madison.

Matthew 17:20 Jesus says to the disciples..."I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain,'Move from here to there' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible."

Faith is one of the things that got us thru nearly 6 months in the NICU. The faith that He will be there by our side no matter what happens. Faith that He knows what is best for us. Faith that He loves us no matter what.

God hears all of our prayers, even the smallest ones. He is by our side, we just have to reach up and let Him take our hand and He will walk by our side through every moment of everyday.