Home! - or - Life after birth

Elijah - My God is Yahweh! 

We're home. Where do I start? It's been a very long road or so it feels like. We came home about a week and half ago. We must apologize for not updating on here like we thought we would. It has been so extremely busy with Dr appointments and taking care of the kids that we hardly have a few minutes of quiet time. Even writing this now I am sure I will be taking a few breaks. And our baby boy is now 6 weeks old today. As some of you may have heard or may not have heard, while we were in the hospital Elijah got an infection. We were set to go home, but they said they had found a membrane "flap" in his bladder that needed to be broken before he could go home. So, we stayed a few more days because the urologist was on vacation. Come Monday when Elijah is suppose to have the membrane broken, the Dr. came in to tell us that there really was no membrane to speak of. Praise the Lord. I don't remember which morning it was but Brad went up to check on Elijah only to discover he felt warm. They take the babies temp's every few hours, but when we're around we'll take his temp and let the nurses know so they can track him. He took his temp it was 101.5, he came down to tell me that Elijah had a fever and they were starting to do blood tests. Some of the results came back abnormal- his body was showing signs of infection. I think it was the next day where they tapped his shunt (pulled some fluid from the site where the shunt is). I came up just after they had done this and was told to talk to the Dr. (luckily my mom and sister were there) she said that the fluid they had pulled from his head was cloudy and they think it may be meningitis. 

I don't even have words to express how I felt at that moment when she was telling me this. My heart just dropped. I know what meningitis is and I know how deadly it is. How could our baby have this? I felt like we had endured all we could handle forever and now this. We called everyone told them to pray. It was heartbreaking looking at my sweet boy sleeping not knowing he possibly might not even survive this. After tapping the shunt they knew they needed to pull it out because it may be causing infection (apparently germs cling to the plastic in the shunt). While they were in the surgery removing the shunt they also took off bone and skin from his skull to tighten up the loose plates. When he came back from surgery, the neurosurgeon said it looked like the infection was just at the shunt site which means not really meningitis but a shunt infection. They had placed an external drain in Elijah's head which took fluid and was replaced with more. This little contraption scared me because none of the nurses were familiar with it and they were taught how to use it as they came on shift, Elijah had to be level with the drain or it would drain too fast. After this surgery he looked like he was in a lot of pain, I can remember this zoned out look he had in his eyes that just made me cry. The external shunt in his head remained there for 7 days till the 72-hour cultures they did came back normal. Finally they replaced the shunt. A couple days later we were moved to our little corner in the "going home soon" room. I think 4 or 5 days later we we're finally discharged! Praise Jesus. I know there are a bazillion more details we could share but then this would be very very long :-) so there is the short version. Typing all this out makes me very emotional just remembering all that has happened and what we have gone through.

Looking back we can see the Lords hand in every aspect of our life as we are/were going through this. We have amazing families. Both helped out tremendously with watching our girls and support. We were also lead by God to an amazing church about a year ago, they have helped us out in numerous ways. There was no membrane flap but if we had been discharged and they had not held us longer for that flap, we may not have caught the infection as quickly at home. The Lord is so good and he truly does provide for us. We prayed for Elijah to be healed and he was. We were worried about not having a second car for all the appointments and the Lord provided. We were worried about not being able to stay close to Elijah during all of this and the Lord provided. Brad's job is ending in a couple months but we know that the Lord is going to provide. We could not have gotten through this alone, and we never were!


 Now that our whole family is back together life has been so busy! Elijah is doing well. He had a ultrasound on his brain yesterday and we are awaiting results on that. His sisters are just in LOVE with him. They love having a little brother and we love having a little son!  Thank you everyone for praying for us in the first part of our journey with our family!