Please pray

Blogging goes against all my privacy-preserving instincts but I agreed to allow (yup, I'm the boss here) this blog because we wanted to keep you informed about how Drew is doing. Both because we know you love him, and because we know that many of you will pray for him and we believe that God will hear those prayers.

And we need your prayers this weekend. Drew is scheduled to be admitted to the Pediatric ICU at Children's tomorrow evening. He will have a repeat sleep study on Saturday night, a repeat feeding study on Monday afternoon and see several specialists in between.

Specifically, please pray:

• That this will go ahead as scheduled as it depends on space being available in the ICU
  
• That the tests will be informative and give the Drs new ideas for diagnosis and management.
  
• That the feeding study will show that it is safe for Drew to eat normally. This is a big deal. If Drew still shows significant aspiration into his lungs he will probably need a G-tube inserted into his stomach to receive his feeds (the NG tube in his nose is not a long-term solution). If things look good we can hopefully go back to breastfeeding and bottles. If things are kind of in between, we will have to make tough decisions about balancing benefits with risks to his long term health.
• That Drew will be completely healed.
  

So...
If you pray, please do and ask your friends to pray too.
If you don't pray, start. Even if you don't know who God is, he knows who you are.


Here is a pic of Drew's day with the cousins. Can't you just feel the love?



kb

Cool epitomized

Mirror mirror

Like a certain Uncle of his, Drew likes to spend time in front of the mirror.

Can you blame him for smiling?

3 months

Drew Aaron at 3 months:

• Weighs 12 lbs and has climbed from the 10th percentile to the 25th! He is noticeably more roly-poly.
  
• Has rolled over tummy-to-back twice and is tirelessly practicing rolling over back-to-tummy. His favorite time to practice is when he is getting his diaper changed; the poopier the diaper, the more urgent the need to practice rolling.
• Is off the ventilator for most of his waking hours (6-8 hours a day). One remaining challenge is dramatic breath-holding spells that he has both on and off the ventilator. The latest theory is that they may be triggered by pain from silent acid reflux, so we are trying to treat for that. He will be admitted to Children's Hospital ICU at the end of the month for a couple days for further testing.
  
• Has discovered his hands. He's been jamming them into his mouth for the last few weeks. This weekend after much intense cross-eyed practice he has finally been successful in moving to the more sophisticated task of sucking only on his thumb.
• Likes jumping, standing, and being held high in the air. Mommy is regaining some of her atrophied arm muscles and doing her best to discourage baby-tossing.
  
• Is still a die-hard Canucks fan, despite their dismal playoff performance. He will often stop what he is doing and stare across the room with a grin; when we track his gaze we find that he is watching his Canucks mobile.
• Likes listening to whistling.
• Shows a distinct preference for dark-haired women, and doesn't really have the time-of-day for blondies.
• Has no patience when waiting for meals. He receives most of his intake through an nasal-gastric (NG) tube in his nose. Yes, after 2 weeks of impressing everyone with his eagerness for breastfeeding, his ability to suck back a bottle in less than 5 minutes, and the fact that he has not once spit up or choked on his meals, a radiographic feeding study showed that Drew had all the while been stealthily shuttling milk into his lungs with every swallow. This was totally unexpected and quite a blow, it put an end to breast feeding and limited bottles to only 3 a day. NG tube feeding at home has been one of our biggest challenges; please pray with us that this will be resolved when his swallowing is reassessed on May 31.
• Has an impressive amount of drool.
• Prefers to play with his NG and ventilator tubing rather than expensive developmentally-stimulating toys.

My Crib is Phat

This is my crib:

It's full of fun stuff like my mobile, my special quilt that grandma made, and the crazy sheets daddy picked out that don't match any of my blankets.

It's pretty cool and all, but why would I sleep there
when I can sleep here?

Or here?

Or here?

Or here?

drew

A note from Drew

Hi everyone!

Mommy and Daddy would love to tell you how things are going but I won't let them. Maybe I'll have a nap soon...or maybe not...

We'll see.

Home

is where the heart is. Or so they say. I think it's where the Drew is.

Being home with Drew is awesome. I can't believe how nice it is to now have this time with just the three of us (and some visitors sometimes). This past week has been our new baby at home phase and we're slowly working out the kinks. Right now Drew's care is a two person job twenty-four hours a day. We do our best to take shifts at night but it's usually hard to sleep through any of his alarms (we can't hear him cry so he makes alarms sound instead). Despite this, being at home is much easier and much more enjoyable than going to the hospital. Understatement of the century I suppose. We are supposed to get nursing support for eight hours a day (respite care - bet there are many a new parent who wish they had that) but apparently nurses are hard to come by so we don't have much support yet. And to be honest, right now we don't really want it. I'm sure we'll change our tune down the line but at this point we're enjoying taking care of Drew on our own. (Karla is planning on posting about the details at some point for all those question askers out there)

While I want to put our time at the hospital (70 days) behind me I don't want to be quick to forget it. Yes it was tough, but as we've stated before we have so much to be thankful for. I wrote earlier how the bible is full of God's promises. One of those promises is that He will give you strength in times of need which will be sufficient for the time. I was reminded of this by one of Drew's nurses and then again today in an article I glanced at. This promise is true and good, great actually, and extremely comforting and empowering. And we're thankful for the strength. But what about when the tough times end or the valley bottom is left in the distance? By no means is Drew out of the woods yet. We still don't know why he doesn't breathe properly, he still has extreme breath holding spells and he doesn't swallow properly (to be explained by Karla) but we're on to a new chapter and things are much better. We're definitely heading up the mountain. In this I hope we rely on God's strength and faithfulness just as much as when we were at the worst. I also hope that we continue to be thankful.

db