Ready For The May Flowers

Well, lots of news to report. First off, Mia has another bladder infection and is on antibiotics again for 10 days. The good news is we caught it early...before she got a fever, so she's doing just fine. We wouldn't have known except they ran the urine culture again on her. The other good news is that she can still go through with surgery because it is only a bladder infection. The chance of infection after surgery is just a tiny bit more, but she'll be on her antibiotics so she should be fine.

We also weighed her yesterday and she's now 12 pounds 2 ounces! Praise God, that is awesome! She continues to eat pretty well and yesterday she got a new vegetable...squash, which she really liked.

Recently though she's having more vomiting issues and last night she threw up quite a bit after her antibiotic, so we're not really sure what's going on with her tummy, but pray that she'll keep her food down and we'll figure that out.

Specific prayers for us tomorrow and the coming days:

1. Pray for the surgeons (there will be a neurosurgeon to take off the plates and there will be a plastic surgeon to reconstruct it properly). Pray that they are well rested and do an excellent job. Pray that she won't have to go through this again, pray for complete success with the first operation.

2. Pray for recovery. We expect there to be swelling and she won't be able to see for a few days because her eyes will be swollen shut. Yet we serve a God much bigger than that and pray that her swelling would be minimal, if not at all. Pray that she would recover very quickly. And pray for her pain.

3. Pray for her brain and eyes. The surgery is so close to those, pray that there would be no damage. In fact, they have to detach her eyes from the skull (at least I think they are attached there...I could be wrong...regardless they have to detach her eyes from whatever they are attached to) and we asked them how they reattach them and they said they didn't, that the eye muscles know how to reattach themselves in the appropriate spots. So pray for that also, but isn't that awesome that God created us in a way that our eye muscles know how to reattach! I'm more and more amazed at the detail of the human body.

4. Pray for wisdom with all the people taking care of Mia, that they would respond appropriately to her needs.

5. Pray that she wouldn't get an infection after surgery. And pray that her bladder infection would go away completely and not come back.

We'll try to update this as soon as we can after surgery. Her scheduled surgery time is 7:30am and they told us it goes about 6 hours. It humbles me to look at the map and see people all over the world praying for Mia, thank you. God continues to be so good to Mia and we are grateful.

I'll Sing You A Song

We were hoping to have heard back from our pediatrician regarding Mia's urine culture, but it wasn't ready yet...they said it should be in tomorrow, so we'll update you on that when we get it. Otherwise we are doing well...no other news to report. Thank you for being such wonderful prayer warriors, God sure is good!

I'm A Little Cowgirl

Mia's Grandma Cheri got her this cute dress when she was in Texas last week. It's still a little big, but she'll grow into it perfectly for summer.

Mia got weighed today and she is now 11 pounds 14 ounces...so close to 12 pounds! She continues to eat pretty well and she got her second dose of sweet potatoes and didn't mind them at all...which is great!

We also had to get another urine sample done today because the one from Monday had a different bacteria growing in it...but not enough to be super concerned, so they wanted to run another sample today just to make sure, we should know by Monday, so pray that it would come back clear. While we were waiting at the pediatrician's office I put Mia on her tummy...which she doesn't like at all...and she rolled over to her back today! I did it one more time just to make sure and she did it again...it's a bit of a workout, but that was a new thing for her, which is very exciting!

Brad is also feeling better, so we are pretty sure it was food poisoning. :( We're just glad he's better.

Sweet Potatoes

This morning Mia had her second try at sweet potatoes and I think she liked it! She kept most of it down...we probably had 1/3 of a small jar along with her bottle. We'll try it again tomorrow and see what she thinks again.

She's doing well. I forgot to mention that they are also going to put a helmet on her sometime after her surgery to fix the flat/misshapen back side of her head. We'll know more about that after surgery, but we are glad because we want her to have a nice round baby head. :)

Pray for Brad though, he got sick last night...we think it might have been food poisoning...something he ate. Pray that it isn't the flu and that Mia and I don't get sick too. We are being extra cautious because we are so close to the surgery date. Until our next post...

When The Smog Lifts...UCLA

We're back home from our trip to LA today. We got up bright and early to make it there by 9am...we left here at 6:15am! Mia slept most of the way and traffic wasn't too too bad...we ended up getting there right on time.

Our first appointment was with the doctor doing her cranial surgery. He went over the whole process again and even though we are nervous, we know that this is what she needs. Anytime you do surgery close to the brain there's always a chance of damage...and also with her eyes...so our prayer is that there would be no damage with her surgery.

We left there and went downstairs to the lab where Mia got poked one more time and Lisa got poked. Brad went over to admissions while Lisa was waiting to get poked and did some pre-admissions stuff. The good news is that we might not need to be at the hospital at 5:30am since we turned in our admissions stuff early...we'll find out the day before what time we really need to arrive.

After that we walked into Westwood (an area with shops and restaurants next to the hospital) and had lunch at our favorite restaurant (The Corner Bakery)...Lisa needed to eat well because after that we were going to get her blood drawn. So, we headed over to the blood bank and they checked us in and got everything ready to go...and then they poked Lisa again. She was very happy it was her and not Mia. :)

So after they got her blood, we took the shuttle back to the hospital and got ready to go. We were leaving LA at about 3pm, which was perfect for avoiding traffic. So it looks like everything is set for her surgery next week and now it's just a matter of waiting. Thank you for praying so far in advance for everything, it means so much to us! We are grateful that so many of you pray for our little girl, she's going to have quite a story to share some day!