A Halloween Homecoming

Let me begin this post with a disclaimer... please show me some grace as I can all but guarantee this post will have numerous typos and grammar errors. I'd even bet some if it will make no sense at all in some sections. Cause you see, our little girl came home last night!!!! I've slept about a total of 32 minutes b/c protective dad instincts are in full gear causing me to have to check on Harper about every 1.32 minutes to ensure she's doing okay. After the 100th check today she's still doing great but darn it I'm still checking and won't stop again for another 25 years.

While we're so elated to have her home the crazy thing is this past week started with quite a bit of drama. It was Monday afternoon, Harper was progressing quite nicely on learning how to feed on her own and I was holding her on my chest after one of her successful feeding times. It was around 4:45 and I was about to give her back to Beth before I had to go to a commitment that evening. Just as I was about to hand her over, Harper had one of those "Brady" events where she stops breathing. She went completely pale, went limp as a noodle, and stopped breathing for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only around 5 seconds. She snapped out of it on her own and afterwards Beth and I were much more freaked out then Harper, who was back to normal in seconds. The nurses assured us it was no big deal and that the other preemies have Brady's much worse then what Harper was having but that didn't help calm us down all that much, especially since this time she was on my chest when the whole thing happened.

The most crappy thing about it was that we instantly knew right when Harper had that Brady that she'd be there in the NICU for another 5 days. Studies have shown that when a baby goes 5 consecutive days without a Brady that they typically will no longer have them, hence the hospital standard not to release a baby without 5 consecutive days of no Brady's. So when that happened we immediately knew Saturday would be the earliest she'd be released, barring another Brady, which after that episode seemed likely. But to our delight, and Harper's determination, she didn't have one more.

At 4:30 last night we were discharged from the hospital and given our child to finally join our home. After a 30 minute ride home from the hospital, which typically is 10 minutes but you better believe I wasn't going over 10 miles an hour on that drive so it took a bit longer, we made it home. Harper genuinely seemed happy to be home and was insistent on being held every waking minute which is completely fine by mom and dad.

This has been a tremendous journey, probably the most emotional, exhausting, character building life experience we've ever been through. I've learned a few things from this ordeal...

• That plans can change and look drastically different then we envision and it's in those circumstances that magical things happen. Let me be frank, this completely sucked, but it gave us an opportunity to train under incredible nurses for a month on how to properly care for Harper. It taught us that patience is a key virtue of being a parent and that sometimes we have to put our agenda aside so that our child can develop her own. But most importantly, to completely and utterly rely on God and realize that our lives are in His almighty hands and His love will always see us through.
• That my wife is the most incredible lady on the planet. You know... I was talking to some high school students I mentor the other day and they asked me what I suggested they look for in a woman. I said immediately "you have to look for a woman that you respect more then any other on the planet." Beth has handled this whole ordeal with such grace and perseverance. She spent hours on end right along side Harper in that dark and dingy room supporting her through this. Harper is lucky to have the most amazing woman on the planet for a Mom and I'm glad I was smart enough to never let go of her when we met 13 years ago.

• That God above all else appreciates honesty. I have to say that at times we were very angry at God through this. We told him too. And when we did he never failed to pull us through the next day. I think we can all get wrapped up in phony formalities with God but really I've learned that He wants us to just lay it out there and when we do that He answers, just as He did for Beth and I through all of this.

So now begins the official start of our new family at home. Beth and I are just so stinkin excited and despite running on no sleep just can't wipe the smiles off our faces. That being said, I need to figure out something about this "pink bomb" that went off in our house. I mean seriously, I grew up in a family of all guys so all these bows, outfits, headbands, accessories are quite out of the ordinary. I'm catching myself wanting to amp up the testosterone in the household to even the keel a bit. Maybe I'll start watching Nascar, or take up building stuff, or buy a bunch of flannel shirts and not shave for a year. On second thought, maybe I'll just try my best to embrace all this girlyness. But I secretly hope Harper will pick up her Dad's love of the roundball, but hopefully will focus more on scoring then fouling out. But as she's already taught me, that's up to her.

Thanks to all for following our little journey and for all the support. I'm not quite sure what will happen with this blog. My dad duties might consume my time and this thing could fade away into oblivion. But I might just give it a shot at keeping it going, in an attempt to continue to document this new adventure in our lives. Furthermore, this has also been quite the exciting year on other fronts including a trip to India, some significant time spent in the hood with at risk youth, among other things so I might just put a few thoughts out here from time to time. So thanks again to all for your love, support, and prayers. Stay tuned!

Groundhog Day

After 33 days straight at the hospital, the days are starting to blur together like crazy. At least for me being back at work helps change things up a bit but for Beth this is even worse. Her days consist of the following: getting up in the middle of the night to pump then going back to sleep, waking up early to pump, getting ready for the day, pump some more, go to the hospital, hang out in a tiny, dark 6x6 room all day while pumping several times, then go home and pump, eat, pump one last time, and then go to sleep and start the vicious cycle all over again.

It's kind of like that movie Groundhog's Day, that is without all the snow and in a much better town. I've even found the annoying guy that says "watch your step, it's a doozie" who in my version is the security guard on the 1st floor of the hospital that I try to sneak by every day. This week in particular, now that we're just waiting on little Harper to figure out how to eat on her own the days have become so monotonous but then came the weekend and I think we've turned the corner. You know the point when Bill Murray decides he's going to make the best of it and learns to play the piano and speak Chinese. Yeah, that's where we're at although instead of learning the piano I have learned how to change a poopy diaper without getting peed all over.

Harper has made fantastic progress this week. She's now up to a smidge over 5 pounds and is finally starting to fill out a bit. We're still waiting on two things to develop before we can take her home; the first being that she has no "events" like the Brady's I've described in past postings and the second is for her to learn how to eat on her own. Well, she hasn't had an event in 4 days so, fingers crossed, those might be behind us. She's also made tremendous progress on the eating front. They've been telling us that when she finally gets it that she'll just take off on this front and that's exactly what's happened. Two days ago she took 53% of her feedings through the bottle and yesterday she took 84%. As soon as she has 24 consecutive hours of 100% feedings through the bottle they will take the feeding tube out of her nose and then from there as long as she can eat two days straight on her own then she can come home, barring any further "events".

Best case scenario we'll be welcoming our little bundle of joy to our home next weekend and Beth is aggressively trying to find a little preemie Halloween outfit for her to wear. After researching all over the web she found a good tip to purchase one of the little outfits they use for the teddy bears at Build a Bear. She's got her eye on a little Hawaiian outfit with a coconut shell bra. I was hoping for an OU Cheerleaders outfit but after this weekend that will be used as her diaper.

Beth and I are doing well, much better now that Harper is starting to pick up on the whole eating thing but I'll confess that last week was the toughest. I was literally dreaming how I could kidnap my daughter from the NICU. I had it all planned out. Since my wife likes to carry purses 3 times the size of the normal persons I was going to pad the bottom with blankets, slide Harper right in, and then bolt for the door. That all said, I'm hopeful that she'll get to come home by next weekend without Dad having to execute this poorly concocted scheme.

On a lighter note, one of the best things of the past week is all the support we've been getting from friends and family. All the gifts of little preemie outfits have helped ensure Harper has an endless supply of pink clothes to cycle through. Also, a group of friends have banded together to provide us meals in the evenings. This has been so great as we typically don't get home until late and have no energy to cook (we haven't even been to the store for a month). We are just so thankful for the outpouring of support as it truly has meant the world to us both.

So.... hopefully my next post will be to inform everyone of the news that Harper has sprung from the hospital and joined her family at home. Thanks for your continued prayers for Harper's development, for her ability to fully learn to eat on her own, and for her to have no more of those stinkin Brady's.

One Last Hurdle...

As someone whose job it is day in and day out to boil incredibly complex tasks into a set of accomplishable and quantfiable milestones this is the part that gets hard, at least for me.

Harper is doing so incredibly well, much much better then expected. She's out of the incubator as now she can consistently maintain her own temperature, she had that pesky IV removed that was pumping in extra calories to beef her up, and she's gaining weight like crazy and is up to 4 lbs 8 ounces and is packing them on every day. Her last hurdle is learning how to eat. I know what you're thinking, she has Blake's genes, this won't be hard at all. If you've ever witnessed me with a bowl of queso in front of me then you know what I mean. But unfortunately it's just not that easy.

Part of me wants an action plan in place to help her figure this out. I'd love it if they'd tell Beth and I to be there every 3 hours for each feeding, give us specific instructions how and when to feed her, and put her on a training regimen of so many pacifier sucks per hour, so many tries of attempting to take a bottle, etc... but.... this is not God's design. God created this thing called eating and has enabled each of his children to learn how to do so on their own (some more then others). The nurses keep telling us this is so natural, that technically Harper should still be inside Mom's belly, and that one day she'll just figure it out on her own without any in depth training regimen implemented by Dad.

I think this is probably an important lesson in fatherhood that God felt important to drill into me from the start, knowing my personality. In that I mean that there will be lots of things that I can control and "fix" for my child but many more things that I won't. It's in these situations that I'm learning how to be a good Dad. For now it's just walking along side of her so she knows that while it's on her to figure this out that I will forever and always be by her side routing her on as she does.

All in all, we are so incredibly blessed with her progress so far. We are surrounded by these incredible babies in the fight for their lives, some constantly crying, others with alarms on their machines constantly going off, and there is our little fighter right in the middle of it just flourishing who barely even lets out a peep despite the regular poking and prodding of loving nurses and doctors. We will all learn so much from this little girl's fighting spirit.

There have been so many highlights so far. The "kangaroo time" will be something Beth and I cherish for life. This is the process I explained in my last post where we hold her skin to skin against our chest for hours. She absolutely loves it, just nestles right in and conks out for hours. It's a very magical time and I think probably as important for Beth and I as it is for her development. Also, we've been blown away by the nursing staff at Northwestern. The profession of nursing has risen several notches in my eyes through this experience and in my humble opinion should be regarded as highly as a police officer, a firefighter, a teacher, or a soldier. There are a few nurses in particular that, if this is possible, love our little girl just as much as we do and take such wonderful care for her. One of our favorite nurses got real teary with us when she was going to be off for a few days cause she was going to miss Harper so much. She even called up multiple times on her day off just to check on her. While nothing can fully take away the incredible awfulness of leaving your child at the hospital at 10:00 at night to go home to sleep, these incredible nurses make that just a tad bit easier knowing the care they are showing our daughter.

So that's it for now, we're down to this last hurdle of eating. This could take 4 weeks or 4 days for her to figure out but when she does then she'll get to come home. Our prayer this week is for Harper's development so she can learn how to eat and for our strength to be patient and trusting of God's timing throughout this process. Thanks all for the support during this time, we appreciate it more then words can express.

Three steps forward, tiny baby steps back

We've heard from multiple parents who've dealt with a child in the NICU that the whole process is a game of "two steps forward, one step back". By that I mean that while there can be great progress, there can also be set backs that you continuously have to overcome. To our overwhelming joy, our experience to date has not been this way at all as we have seen tremendous milestones occur with only minimal set backs to date.

Harper is now up to 4 lbs 3 ounces, which is a gain of 8 ounces in a matter of a few days. She clearly gained her father's keen ability to gain weight quickly. This progress has allowed for her to come out of that darned boxed-in incubator and into her own crib. While in the incubator she laid there a naked jaybird, but now in the crib she can get all dolled up which I'm sure my wife is more excited about then I. I've never seen more pink in my life. I'm still quite disappointed we haven't managed to get her in an OU outfit yet but I'll be sure that happens soon.

I had mentioned in an earlier posting that there are several criteria the doctors are measuring to determine when she can come home, a few of which she's already conquered. The first being that she's able to breath on her own, which she was able to do from day one. The second that she be able to maintain a constant temperature, which the recent weight gain has helped allow. However, there are a couple others she's still working on.

The two main hurdles she needs to overcome is the ability to eat on her own (without the use of the tube through her nose that she's been using so far) and for her brain to develop so that these "Apnea" and "Brady" episodes (I'll explain later) cease to exist. As for eating, she is now starting to try to learn to nurse and/or take from a bottle. She hasn't quite figured that all out yet but will soon. They say she's still quite early in this regard so this is a normal thing that they figure out gradually, typically after 34 weeks, which she is just at now.

As for the Apneas and Bradys.... preemies.com describes them as...

Apnea means a period in which breathing stops. In premature babies, apnea is any pause in breathing that lasts longer than 20 seconds, causing bradycardia, or a drop in the baby’s blood oxygen level.

So let me translate into lamens terms. Breathing is something we take for granted and the ability to automatically breath is, for lack of a better term, "automated" by our brain. Well, preemies don't have this ability until their brain develops to a certain level. Therefore, when little Miss Harper gets too comfortable (like when laying in Mom's arms) she'll forget to breath for a minute, her heart rate will drop down, and then for her it always jumps right back up in a matter of seconds. You wouldn't even notice it without the machines monitoring all her vitals. We're being told that for other preemies that this is much more of an issue then for Harper. But that being said, they won't send Harper home until she's had 5 consecutive days of no Brady's and she's had one of these every day so far.

All in all, I would contribute her tremendous progress so far to three things...

First being her mom's milk. It took a few days for mom to get the hang of this but once she did, and Harper was able to get 100% of her feedings through this instead of by formula, it made all the difference. They've been putting her milk in a tube and sending it straight to Harper's belly through a tube inserted through her nose. I certainly realize that nursing doesn't work for everyone but it has made a dramatic difference for our child.

Second is a technique termed "Kangaroo Care". Kangaroo Care was something first discovered in less developed countries, and then implemented in Europe and the US, and was discovered when they would send preemies home very early with the instruction of holding the baby, skin to skin, to your body as much as possible. Now it's been adopted in the US by taking the preemies out of the incubator, typically no less then an hour, and having mom or dad hold their naked but diapered baby against their bare chest. This helps in many ways like for bonding, maintaining tempature, weight gain, and brain development. But the best part about it is that we can hold her for hours and the nurses keep laughing at my ability to fall asleep with her in my arms way before Harper falls asleep.

Lastly, the power of prayer. Beth and I have prayed daily and have asked for His healing power of specific requests and to this point darn near all have been answered. We would continue to ask that you help us lift up these specific requests:

- That Harper's brain will develop so these darn Bradys will disappear
- That Harper will take quickly to nursing
- That Harper will continue to gain weight

That's all for now. I'm back to work this week and will officially take my paternity leave when Harper comes home. The great thing is though that my company has been so supportive which I'm very thankful for. Beth is officially taking her leave starting immediately to be up at the hospital to encourage our little fighter, which I'm so happy about. The church has been very supportive which we're very thankful for as well.

Hope to inform you all of some continued great progress later in the week! This little girl is quite the fighter and such an inspiration. Can you tell I'm a proud dad already? :)

Thursday, October 7 - Update on Harper

Such a life changing experience, like the birth of your first child, can certainly turn anyone's world upside down. Add the added dynamic of a child in the NICU and there's a few extra challenges for the proud new parents to sort out.

All in all, little Harper is doing great and mom and dad feel extremely blessed to have a little girl whose such a fighter. We've had the opportunity to meet many of the other families dealing with similar situations and are so thankful that Harper is in the situation that she's in. Some of these other little blessings are in much more difficult situations, for instance one little girl that weighs a smidge over 1 pound. I think my left pinky toe weighs more than that.

There are several things that are working in Harper's favor. First, is that she is a girl. All the doctors joke around about "Wimpy White Boys" but there are proven studies that white male boys have the roughest go at being a preemie due to their lung development, which is slower then other ethnicities and also little girls. Furthermore, Harper was given a couple steroid injections through her mom prior to delivery which really helped prepare her to be able to breath on her own without a ventilator like so many of these other babies in the NICU.

Unfortunately though, it's not all positive. Our ability to hold little Harper has been extremely limited (mostly 30 minutes a day) due to a skin condition that's somewhat common in new borns and preemies called Jaundice. It's cured through the use of a big blue light, kind of like a blue tanning bed, which is shined upon the baby 24 hours a day. However, yesterday the doctors confirmed that this has improved to the point where they could remove the light for a couple days. This made for the best day for mom and day so far as we got to hold little Harper against our skin for hours on end for the first time. Furthermore, Harper is forced to have several tiny cords and IVs hooked up to her at all hours. The IVs are the worst as they are so tiny that they can break easily and they are extremely tough to fit into Harper's small and fragile little veins. The multiple attempts for these caring nurses to find these veins cause Harper to have all these little scabs and cuts on her hands and feet. It also caused a reaction in her left arm much made it swell up like incredible hulks which was really tough to see. But it healed fast and the docs confirmed there is no lasting impact.

The most common question we get from family and friends is "when will she come home". Unfortunately, we don't have a date and the doctors are very careful not to give one, which to be honest I'm very okay with. I'm not very keen on the doctors giving us an arbitrary date so mom and dad can feel better. The honest, and somewhat blunt answer, is that she'll come home when she's ready. There are several main criteria: she must breath on her own (which she's already doing), she must maintain a consistent temperature (which means she needs to fatten up quite a bit), she must be able to eat on her own (she's taking her mom's milk through an IV but will need to transition to the natural way before going home), and her brain must develop. All these things will happen in due time and with Harper's already fantastic progress I'm hopeful it will all happen sooner then later.

That's it for now, I'm hanging out at home this morning to do the almighty dad duty of putting together the crib. Beth is getting the heck out of dodge to see the baby to avoid my screaming that will certainly come from my lack of any ability whatsoever to do things with my hands. Thanks again for all the prayers and support. We'd continue to ask for these specific prayer requests to be lifted up:

• That Harper's little brain will develop.
• That Harper will be able to continue to increase her feeding amounts so she can grow big and strong.
• That Mom and Dad can continue to look on the positive side of this nasty situation and see God's grace and love every step of the way.
• That Harper's Jaundice will be cured so the dreaded blue lights won't have to come back.
  

Welcome Miss Harper Grace!

We're proud to announce the arrival of our daughter, Harper Grace Hall, who arrived at 5:46 on Thursday, September 30th after 35 hours of labor end to end. She came in quite a bit early (at 32 weeks) but is doing great. Her weight at birth was 3lbs 13ozs and 17 inches. In typical fashion in my wife's side of the family, she entered this world full of drama and emotion. I've been so caught up with spending time with her and taking care of Beth that I haven't had a chance to send out an update till now so my apologies. So with that being said, let me try to boil down all the events of the past several days into this somewhat brief post.

It all started the morning after my last posting. We grew overly confident that the doctors had gained control of the sporadic blood pressure Beth was facing due to the preeclampsia. So much so that I had planned to work from home that day and join Beth around lunch time at the hospital. Well, I received a call from Beth around 9:00 that her blood pressure was at an all time high and the doctor was coming in to check her out so I hopped in the car and made it to her room just in time to hear the Doc inform her that they were going to induce.

As a male who hasn't been through all this before, when you hear induce it seems to imply that it's somewhat of a rapid process. However, I learned over the course of the next 30 hours that is simply not the case. Why do they even call it inducing anyway, a better term would be "forcing the unnatural", "gently prodding", or maybe "long, slow, painful, indefinite process". Anyway, the next 30 hours was a slow, gradual process of minimal progress and some pretty major pain for my wife. We were hoping the epidural would come sooner rather then later but they ended up giving her that at the half way mark after around 15 hours and that was a big help. It is impossible to imagine these incredible woman that can last this length of labor without that. I'm certainly not man enough for that sort of pain.

From there it was just the waiting game, until..... the nurses came in for a regular check up on Beth, we noticed them start to whisper, then one of them leans over to us and says "don't be alarmed, we just triggered an alarm and about 20 people are about to rush in your room". Low and behold the flood gates open and an army of scrubs comes rushing in along with her doctor who was dripping with sweat after sprinting from 4 buildings down after receiving the alarm on her pager.

They informed us that the alarm went off because Harper's heart rate had dropped (we came to find out that was due to the placenta which was detaching from Beth's womb due to all the trauma of the past 30 hours) and they ordered an emergency c section. While I was terrified I was also quite relieved that all this wouldn't last another 30 hours.

They rushed Beth out, threw the whole sterile get up on me and I made into the surgery room minutes before Harper left her momma's belly which she was so content to stay in. Harper was quite shocked to be out at first, making no noise and not moving which had Dad in a panic and was rushed out by a team of NICU docs. They checked her out for what seemed like an eternity and then invited me in to see her. I walked in a basketcase not knowing what to expect but at the sound of my voice her eyes opened wide and looked right at me and right then and there she captured my heart for life.

Little Harper is doing great and being cared for by what I'm convinced is the best NICU practice in the nation. She's breathing on her own, eating her mom's milk, sucking a pacifer, and all the doctors are calling her quite the feisty little diva which I'm convinced she gets from her dad. Beth on the other hand had a rough go at first. Due to the high blood pressure from the preclampsia they constantly were checking her every fifteen minutes for 24 hours after delivery which extended the sleepless nights caused from the 30 hours of delivery. On top of that they had her on this anti-seizure medicine called magnesium which, in lack of a better term, makes you feel like a bag of poop. Once they took Beth off the mag she was feeling much better and was able to spend some much needed time connecting with her daughter which was probably one of the most meaningful things I've witnessed in my life.

In life we so try to control every little detail through these "plans" we create for ourselves. Certainly if you know Beth and I well we take this to an extreme. But sometimes God has plans of his own and while sometimes we can't understand them they are infinitely more wise then anything we could possibly dream up. We have a house in slight disarray, which would have been in major disray if not for the tiddying up of loving family members. But so many things we had planned simply aren't they way we pictured. We don't have a crib, no rocking chair is at home, no decorations are on Harper's wall, no car seat is in the car. Beyond these material things, our plans of holding Harper in our arms until the wee hours, passing her around to doting family and friends, rocking her to sleep, and bringer her home to her new room will not happen for several weeks, possibly 2 months at the worst case. Beth is being released today so this will certainly be a day filled with tears for mom and dad but we leave knowing our little gift will be receiving the absolute best care possible and mom will be able to get some good rest before welcoming Harper to our home.

I am so thankful for a loving God that meets us exactly where we are and could not imagine going through all this without having a strong reliance on Him and his almighty plans. I am fully convinced that God put in his Word statements like "I knew you in the womb", "you are fearfully and wonderfully made", and "you are God's workmanship" so that Beth and I (and so many others) would find comfort during insanely challenging times like this. I certainly could not imagine going through all this without this faith.

Thanks to all for the constant calls, texts, notes, prayers, gifts, support, etc... Some were received at exactly the right time when I kind thought was needed. The fact that Harper is doing so well makes us hopeful that she'll be home sooner rather then later. We are so thankful and madly in love with her and know full well that she's going to grow big and strong in preparation for joining our family and our home.