Abigail Brooke

It is five something in the morning and I finally had a few minutes to document and share about Abigail. Friday morning, May 28th, at 6am in the morning we went in to induce labor. We expected to have a baby around noon and of course, naively planned the entire day. With Aunt's, nephews, and Grandma and Papa we had a full house that was overwhelmed and excited to see this new baby.

I had an abnormally large amount of amniotic fluid that kept her from moving down into the birth canal and my Dr. who is formally a midwife wanted to safely wait things out to make sure of safety. Finally at 3 or 4pm she broke my water and things got to rolling and at 6:22pm we had a GORGEOUS 9# 4 oz. baby Abigail. She was round and roly poly and the most beautiful shade of pink right from the beginnning!

She looked SO healthy that we were ALL ready to snuggle her up and pass her around, just as we always do with our newborns. We pretty well have a set schedule of who gets to hold and coo first and so on and so forth. BUT that didn't happen. The nurses waited as long as they could to see if she was going to push passed the bad breathing, and she didn't, so they took her to the nursery to see the Pediatrician.

Since her sisters and family didn't get to see her and NO ONE got to hold her they tried to hold her up into the window for a moment for them to catch a glimpse, but things took a quick turn for the worse and she was whisked away. The Pediatrician handed her over to the Neonatoligist and he came to tell us what was in her near future. She needed to be sedated and put on a ventilator. They cut her ambilical chord off and feed tubes into her stomach through her belly button, and away it started.

By 10pm we were filled with such heaviness and sadness! But our family immediately rallied and insisted that she was where she needed to be and that things would be fine and wanted us to rest and have faith. Before we could even breathe one of our Pastor's from church, Clint Smith, was there to bring a burst of energy and hope with words of encouragement and love and I can NOT tell you have much that helped and meant to us! Thank you Clint and church!

Saturday morning was harder, they gave us a solemn guess about how long the process could take and told us that she was VERY sick. Seeing my baby hooked up to all of that and not being able to touch her was overwhelming and I of course broke down.

God intervened and sent Andy Goode and Ryan Blackwell with messages of love and hope and that continued on with the mass of people who started to pray for Abigail and her healing. Before the night was over her prognosis was already getting better!!! They discharged me and we went home to our girls and family, and if you don't think that was hard!!!

So many texts, fb comments, phone calls, and visitors started to appear and we felt such a love and blanket of friendship and peace that I cannot explain. Sunday morning they thought they'd try to extibate her, which meant that they would take her off the ventilation system and try to let her breathe on her own, but the Dr. decided to wait for another GOOD day for good measure. Andy Wilson came to visit and so did Doug Sarver, who has come through so much with his own son this last week and it meant a lot that he came.

SOOOO, Margaret and Tamara and their boys went home, and now dad, Landon and Sonya will be heading out today. My mom is staying for a day or two and family is rallying and making plans to come help for awhile so that I can be at the hospital with Abigail, Jeff can go back to work, the girls have someone (since they cannot come to the NICU)and we can find some kind of schedule or normal for this situation for awhile.

Thank you for your prayers and comments. I KNOW she will heal and that we will bring her home, but being a human and a female hopped up on emotion and pain I still ask for your diligence in praying for her and your friendship so that I don't allow satan to grab me when I have SO much to attend to right now.