Ready to play!

This baby was in bladder/kidney surgery less than 48 hours before this picture was taken. I heard babies bounce back fast, but this is wild! So, so thankful!! Annabel woke up after 13 hours of sleeping in her own bed through the night and wanted to play!

The worst is over!

Yay!! We are through the hardest part. After the last update, we still waited quite a while until we were able to see Annabel. It was so hard waiting!! If I knew where they had her, I probably would have busted in. Apparently she was being so good, too good. They had to aggravate her a little to get her to fuss when she was waking up from surgery.  I think she had them worried.

Anyway, it was so so great to finally see her. She was just staring, but she locked eyes with me and started grunting a little. I can't even tell you how thankful I was to see her and to know she knew I was there with her. We went back to our room and I was able to hold her and nurse her.

She actually wanted to play a little. It was fun for a while. She was smiling a little and playing a bit with her book and rattle.  The medicine she got (kind of like an epidural) was still in her system.  As it wore off, she definitely started feeling the pain.  I held her until about 10:30 while she went in and out of sleep and crying.  She finally got into a pretty good sleep, and I laid her down. She slept through the night pretty well and is doing OK this morning.

She is playing a little on her back. It is still evident she is in pain, but it must not be as intense as it was yesterday.

Thanks again, and again for all the prayer and support.  We have made it through the most difficult part and are on the road to recovery. Her kidneys seem to be functioning well and we should head home today after her last IV antibiotic early afternoon.   We won't know the success of the surgery on her ureter for months after she has really healed.  He made the decision not to fix the reflux while he was in there. So we will continue on the antibiotics until we can do a test (3-6 months down the road) to determine if it has healed (or improved) on its own (as it does sometimes), or if we need to do a small procedure to help it along. (Needs anesthesia but is quick and just a substance inserted through her urethra - no incisions!!)

I will update again as I can for those interested in the details.

She is out

Annabel is out of surgery and in recovery. We got a good report from the doctor. She still has two whole kidneys! I'll post details at some point. We haven't seen her yet...
Thanks again for your continued prayers and encouragement. We feel loved.

Update.

She is back in surgery now. Thank you everyone for your prayers. They have been felt beyond words.  It took quite a bit longer than we thought until we were able to hand her off to the doctors, which was a bit stressful on us.  Annabel on the other hand was busy checking everything out and making new friends.  The answered prayer is that she was a perfect angel the whole time. She hardly fussed about being hungry.

We met the nurses and doctors. They are all great and we feel so comfortable with them. The anesthesiologist is wonderful. He and his wife pray for his patients every morning! 

They took her back about 9 and she has a 4-hour block of time on the surgery schedule. We don’t know exactly how long it will take though.  We will update when we can.

Thank you for making us feel so loved and prayed over and for all your encouraging words.  We are so blessed by our friends and family!

Official time.

We received the call for the official time.  6:30am arrival and 8am surgery.

I am going to get up and feed her around 2am. She can nurse 6 hours before surgery.  It's a small thing, but pray she isn't too hungry on the way to the hospital. She is such a happy baby unless she is hungry!  It will be a hard enough drive/time at the hospital in the morning. It will be even harder if she is hungry and I can't feed her. 

Thank you!

Pre-Surgery Appointment

I scheduled an appointment for Annabel for today to have a last checkup before her surgery.  It was an act of faith because if the healing we had been praying for had occurred, there wouldn't have been a way to know until surgery started. My hope was that we would find a miracle today during the ultrasound, but unfortunately that was not God's plan. I have prayed so hard for her to be healed and I know many of you have prayed along side of us.  Thank you!

But, God is still in control.  As Jesus said (obviously on a much grander scale than what the urologist stated was a fairly common surgery), "not my will, but Yours be done."

I just have to hang onto this: "...for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10 ESV

God's plan is bigger and better than we know. Keep praying for her little body and the wisdom of the doctors and assistants that will be caring for her on Thursday.  Dr. Perez did say today that it looked likely that she could loose half of her kidney because of the size of her ureter and the damage to that half of the kidney.  But he said it really could go either way.  Lets pray he can fix it all at her bladder and not have to make the second incision to get to her kidney and possibly remove half of it.

With love. Corinne