Almost there

Knox has been doing so good each day. He will be one week old tomorrow and it makes me rejoice for him being here and also sad because his first week of his little life has been in the NICU. I sit by him and pray all the time and it is something about a newborn baby that makes the presence of God stronger than ever. I feel God there in that room so strong every time we are in there. Not only with KNox but with all the babies in the room. He is by far the sweetest little thing I have ever laid eyes on. He is such a good baby and loves to just open his eyes and stare at you. I have never in my life seen a man full of so much love and pride as Joey. He is the best dad I could ever ask for. The tubes and machines in the NICU make me really nervous and Joey is a pro at handling Knox with all the gadgets hooked to him. He flips him around and changes his diapers like a champ. He has even learned how to control some of the machines Knox is hooked to. Knox's nurse asked him if he was in the medical field :). Knox's doctor told us yesterday about "Kangarooing" your baby. I took Knox and put him down in my shirt and they call it "skin on skin" He is in absolute heaven when we do this. He loves being pressed up next to me as you can see in the picture. His breathing gets the slowest when we do this. He is so relaxed hearing my heart beat and listening to me breath. He gets mad when I have to put him back. I love the way he smells, when I come home I can smell him all night.

He is on 23 to 25 % oxygen right now and half a liter. he only needs to be on room air at 21% to come off and they have tried a few times int he past 24 hours to take him off but he struggles a little when they do so they have to put him back on. We have learned to stop asking when they think it will be because it is clearly on his own time. However the doctor does predict it should be any day now. Once he is off the oxygen he just has to stay one night to make sure he is okay and then he can come home!

Please pray that he will come off completely so he can come home! We are absolutely in love with this little fella!

knox update

We are so blessed and praising God that Knox is here finally. I did not know it was possible to love him this much. We knew going into delivery at 36 weeks that he may require oxygen. For the first 4 hours after he was born we were able to keep him in our room with us thanks to our friend Kim who is a nurse who volunteered to stay with us to help transition him. He was having trouble breathing and cried the entire 4 hours. I got to hold him a few times but at the end of the hours we knew he had to go to the NICU. They put him on a "C-Pap" which is a large breathing tube that sits in his nose. Normal breathing is at 21 percent oxygen and Knox was requiring about 50 percent. He was working really hard to breath and it broke my heart watching him struggle but we have been assured since friday that this is going to take time. Last night at 8 they decided to give him a little procedure of giving him medicine through a tube to help his lungs develop a little faster. Immeditely his Oxygen went from 50 percent to 28 percent which was great. He slept all night last night with the C-Pap in breathing much better. Today they decided to take the C-pap out and put a fisher canula (sp?) in its place which is much smaller tubes for breathing and makes him work a little harder than with the C-Pap in. They did this at 3 this afternoon and its 9:30 pm now and he is still on it which is good. his oxygen is higher again about 40 percent but everything is working better thn before.SO now at this point we are waiting to see how he handles it through the night and hopefully he will be able to stay on it so he doesnt need more help. Our prayer is to keep him comfortable and his lungs to strengthen so he can come off the oxygen all together and come home soon! We are staying here at the hospital with him this week until he comes home. They say its on his time when he will be ready but we are thinking at the earliest this Thursday or friday he may be ready to come home. There just is not any way to tell when except time.

I got to hold him today finally once he came off his C-Pap and he loved it. I loved it too of course! Joey and I talked to him and he kept opening his little eyes and snuggling next to me, I was sad to leave him. We are going to wait till tomorrow to hold him again so we dont get him worked up too much tonight.

I will update tomorrow to let you know his progress. I am praising God for giving us such an incredible little boy who has a ton of fight in him and that he will be fine once we get him through this little bump in the road.

Please keep praying for him we are honestly counting on them!

Almost Here

It has been a while since I've updated this blog! We are so close to the end of this pregnancy I wanted to give a final update. We will be 35 weeks on this Saturday and initially I was really pushing to have Knox delivered next week at the beginning of the week. Dr. Tucker finally just told me "Not going to happen" about a week ago. Of course I was crushed because although I do not want him to come too early I am fearful of the unknown for carrying him much longer. I was exactly to the day today as far along when we had Grayson. Satan has been working overtime trying to blind side me to believing that we will lose Knox any day now because something is wrong with my body. God has been pushing peace on me though and I am convinced this is not true and that what happened with Grayson was a complete rare thing to happen and has nothing to do with my body or with Knox. I have been going every Monday for the past month or so to have a Non Stress Test done to measure his movements versus his heart rate. It's been nice going in every Monday morning and laying there listening to his sweet little heart beat for an hour or so. We have been also going every Thursday and having ultrasounds to make sure he looks okay which he always does. He has been laying head down pretty much the entire pregnancy and has waved at us a few times with his little fingers. His cord has stayed put laying straight across his tummy and I'm praying it stays there!

Having an ultra sound every single week for as long as we have has already made us feel so extremely close to him. He is a very little active thing and has the hiccups almost every other day poor little thing! But the doctor said this is a good sign. I had steroid shot injections last Tuesday and again on Thursday to help his lungs develop a little sooner than normal because he will be here so soon. I was really nervous about having them because I am so afraid to even drink a coke at this point much less steroid shots! But I was assured after lots of prayers that the shots are completely fine for him.

So here we are at the end of all this and go back Monday for a Non Stress Test again then Thursday for a final weigh ultra sound and Dr. Tucker is trying to schedule my C-section for Friday late evening or no later than Saturday morning. So he will be here either the 12th or 13th at the latest! That is only a week away! There is a small chance that because he will be 36 weeks he may require some oxygen when he comes out so my request for prayer is of course for Knox to hang in there till next week and to also have his lungs ready so he can stay with us in the room and not have to go to the NICU. Hopefully the next time I post something on here it will be his sweet little face!

I pray that God will allow us to feel your prayers and I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit is without limit and does allow us to feel them. So please if you think of us in your prayers we would appreciate it!