home is where your story begins...

we are finally home!! my precious cousin made this video and her sweet boyfriend wrote this song and is the one singing! i hope you are blessed through it! :o)

My God is good.

Allthe time is He good!! :o)

I received a phone call yesterday afternoon from a nurse practitioner from the Hospital. When someone from the hospital calls my cell phone it comes up as "unknown" so, naturally, I didn't answer it! well She left a VMail and I just checked it today around 12:00 p.m. and in her message she said she wanted me to call her back so we can discuss options for when Reagan comes home!!!! So I immeditely called he back. Well, another NP answered and said she wasn't around and was on a different floor so I left my work number with her and she said she would call me abck when she came back up. Every phone call between then and when she actually aclled me I flipped out thinking it was her. I was soo anxious to hear what options I had for Reagan to come home! She finally called me back and said the 2 options were:
1.To keep Reagan in the hospital and continue her P.O. feeding (bottle feeds) which could take several weeks..
or
2. Go ahead and insert a Gastronomy Tube. Which, if I chose this option She would possibly have the surgery done by the end of this week and giving recovery time, could go home next week!!!!!!

I was exstatic to hear that my little girl could come home next week! I told her I was ready to go ahead with the G-tube if it meant she could come home earlier! She said she would talk to the surgeons and they would call me soon and let me know what date they decided on to perform the surgery and to get my consent for it. So I am patiently waiting that phone call now.

I called Reagan's bedside a little while later just to see how she was doing and see how well she ate with her bottle...it wasn't great, BUT they stopped her phenobarbital ysterday!!! :o) The nurse said they took phenobarb levels and b-c she was doing soo good they decided to stop it! I was told she would be on phenobarb for 6 months!!! So to hear that they stopped it completely shocked me, but I was excited! They are also continuing to weane her methadone! Last I heard it was at .5...so she is getting close to be off of that as well!

My little girl is growing so fast. I was gone for 1 week and when Chad and I got there last Friday she was so big! Thankfully my aunt volunteered to drive me to bham this Thursday! and Chad & I are going up for the weekend as well! I cant wait to see her again! :o) I just love her sooo stinking much.

If you could continue to pray for the surgery and that the date they chose is in God's perfect timing and that His will be done. Also that the Dr.'s will have nimble hands while working on my sweet angel! I am eternally greatful for everything that has happened in the past 2 motnhsin Reagan's life and mine.

Once again, To GOD be the Glory forever and EVER!!! AMEN.

TESTS...

It seems that is what God is doing lately. Testing me...Testing my hsuband..and testing my friends. My husband and I are down to one car, pretty close to purchasing another car, and this morning we are on the way to work, we get on the interstate and all of a sudden my car just quites... No explanation!? There was plenty of gas in it, just changed the oil, and just put transmission fluid in it last Friday. The battery was not dead b-c it was turning over everytime we tried to crank it. My mother in law had to come and pick us up and take both of us to work this morning! Later on, Chad sent me a text message saying how depressed he was...and I told him there was no need to be, sometimes God just likes to throw a little adventure in our days and it's just a test to see how we handle it...if we will give our hardships up to him and let Him receive all the glory and honor and praise or if we let things that happen like this ruin our entire day, and sometimes our entire lives! Then I told him, "Just like God was testing us with our situation with Reagan!" We are at the end of that road and God has DEFINITELY received all the glory! My husband even came to know Christ better and is talking about going into the ministry! God is soo amazing! He tries to get our attention in subtle ways, but sometimes He has to use BIG GIGANTIC ways to change our paths to righteousness. what I have learned is that even through the "storms" of life...He shall be PRAISED!!

I just received a call this morning saying that one of my close friends and her husband went to find out the sex of their baby and it had passed away...What a terrifying situation to be in. I honestly could not imagine such a thing, but like I said....God puts us through tests to see if we will look to Him for strength. I have begun to pray for her and her family through this time...I know it's soo hard to go through! I pray that God will give them a peace about it and strength and let them be aware that it is for His glory that this has happened. I pray they will look to Him and Him only. I know tears will be shed for awhile...but I pray that those tears will not blur her vision toward Christ.
Please pray for my friend and her family. They are very precious to me and I would absolutley do ANYTHING for them!

*Praise be to GOD for the great things He has done!*
Love:: RH

To God be the GLORY!

...A continuation of Reagan's update!

After Reagan was taken off of ECMO AND the ventialtor all in the same week, she was then moved to a crib! and then a few days later was moved to 3NW NICU! The 3NW is a step down from the NICU on the 6th floor where we had spent the 1st month in! and with her moving to 3NW it meant she was even closer to coming home! Well...it has now been a month since then and exactly 2 months tomorrow that she has been in Birmingham! She has recently been moved to Special Care, which is even closer to coming home, but just not quite there yet! The only thing we are waiting on is for her to eat through a bottle well enough to go home without a feeding tube. This seems like the most frustrating part, because it seems soo trivial. But because she had been fed intraveniously up until she was moved to 3NW, shes got to get a grasp on the whole 'suck, breathe, and swallow' technique. Chad and I went up there this weekend and she finally took 2 oz! She is supposed to take 3! and she took 2 the other 2 times I fed her! and she also took 2 this morning with OT! I am soo proud of her progress this far and looking to coming home with her VERY soon! ... Keep on praying! We have been so blessed and may God come out in the end with ALL the glory!! He is GOOD...and HE is the GREAT physician! :o) I will post some pictures later....I dont have any new ones on thsi computer, for I am at work.

love in CHRIST! ::RH

sorry....RMH::Our miracle baby contd.

ok..I am so sorry I had to kind of cut everyone off in my last post, I was at work and the sirens started going off because we were under Tornado warnings! So we had to all go down stairs...for about 10 minutes! anyways...

So Meconium Aspiration....Reagan made a bowel movement in the womb and swallowed it a day before she was born. When she swallowed it it got down in her lungs and when she was born, she was pretty much suffocated. They immediately took her out of O.R. and to the NICU so they could put her on a ventilator. When that one wasn't working sufficiently they needed to transport her to Baptist South (she was born at Baptist East). At South, they had something called an osolator (I'm not quite sure how to spell that!?) which it's a little bit stronger, better type of ventilator. While I was in recovery they wheeled her in her incubator next to my bed and I hardly got to see what she looked like because my bed was risen high enough for me to peak in....but I did get to touch and hold her sweet precious hand! :o) That was such a blessing for me, nobody else, not even her daddy, could touch her! (I felt realy special.) I only got to visit with her for a little bit before they had to take her to South. That morning around 3:00 AM My husband and I were sound asleep in my hospital room and a NICU nurse came in and told us that they were going to transport her to Children's Hospital in Birmingham! I was devastated. They were moving my sweet angel, of whom I hadn't got to hold, 1 and a half hours away from me!! They needed to take her to Children's because they specialize in things such as this. Reagan had to be put on an ECMO machine. (Shwon Below) Bacially this machine has tubes attached to it, which are surgically placed in the two arteries on the right side of your neck the two tubes pulls out old blood, oxygentaes it and then enters it back into the body. Naturally I was freaked out by the concept, but what you don't understand is that I had soo many people praying for me, my husband, and Reagan that a sense of peace just washed over chad and I through this whole experience. Reagan with the tubes shown below.

3 weeks went by and Reagan was still not off of the ECMO. They had it weaned down super low and they were ready to take her off that next day, but a clot had formed in the "bladder" of the machine and they had to switch it out with a new one. Because they ahd to do this, it caused a huge set back with Reagan's progression. She was almsot there and then all of a sudden it just got worse! She started gaining weight trmemndously because of fluid that was running through her. It eventually seeped into her chest cavity and was putting pressure on her little heart and lungs and not allowing them to work properly. A couple of days later, the nurse noticed she was having seizures during the night and they did a head ultrasound onher and found a small bleed. That was a very hard day for me. The head bleed is a risk factor when babies are on ECMO for a long time like she was. But, as a mother, I wasn't really expecting something like this happen to my baby... From then on we started expecting the worse in each situation and when the best case scenario became reality we praised God even MORE!

A few days later a ton of our family and a few friends came by to just visit with Reagan. It was a Tuesday afternoon which turned into night. My aunt and I walked back to see her and when we did the nurse asked us to give her just a few minutes and she was doing something with Reagan's ECMO tubes. We sort of just stepped back, but still in eyesight of what they were doing...she then looked at us and asked if we would step out of the unit for a minute and we did. I was freakign out, because I had NO lcue what was going on! We went back in the waiting area where all of our family was seated and talking and laughing and I walked in and todl them what had just happened. A few minutes later a receptionist came back there and asked for Chad and I to come with her and wait in the "Family Room"...apparently this is where they take famkilies when they need to tell them something really serious. So we, not so patiently, waited in the the romo and a Dr. came in (can't remember her name!?) and told us that they were going to have to do an emergency removal of the ECMO! Apparently an oxygen bubble got in the tubes with her blood and destroyed the machine!? We walked back into the waiting area and everyone was laughing and carrying on...when we got to the door and everyone became real silent and just stared at us...and I looked at Chad and told him to tell everyone what the Dr. told us. So, after he said that everyone began to pray. we joined a circle in the middle of this tiny room and prayed out loud for God to be with the Reagan so she won't be in pain..to be with teh Dr.s and nurses to get them all sturdy hands and knowledge of what to do. Later on the Surgeon came back and told us the surgery was over and everything went perfectly!! Reagan was tolerating coming off of ECMO just fine! and that now they can sleep better! haha. My family and I think this was God saying..."Ok people, it's time for her to come off of this machine now! If you just take her off she will be just fine!!" and she was! God is definitely good...ALL THE TIME! He just amazes me how mighty He is! Here is another picture of me and Reagan while she was on ECMO...in these pictures you can really see how swollen she became! I called ehr "Ms. Piggy" ! :o)

Iam going to finish my updates in another post. :o)

RMH::Our miracle baby.

So, I never get on here and I am sorry for that. BUT! I will update right now on what has been going on!

I began to have contraction August 12th around 10:30 p.m., but I wasn't quite sure what they were?! That next morning I was still hvaing them and my husband had already gone to work so I had to call him to come back b-c my aunt had come picked me up and was taking me to the hospital. I got checked in aroud 9:30 the morning of August 13th and was shortly back in Triage hooked up to monitors. Shortly after my hubby arrived the nurses started noticeing Reagan's heartrate dropping and she came into the room where I was and announced , "We are doing a c-section at 12:15." I was sort of in shock, but excited at the same time, because that meant I didn't really have to go through a lot painful laboring!! (Thank you Jesus!) I got prepped to go to the O.R. and the hubs got dressed up in his scrubs! They wheeled me to O.R. and past my family in the waiting area and I got to see who all was there before my surgery. (My mom had driven from Florida. my daddy was there, My dad's girlfriend...I think that was it at the time..I dont really remember!?) They took em to O.R. and immediately put in my spinal and layed me down Chad, my husband, sat next to me holding my hand the whole time! the put up the curtain and began the surgery. at 12:46 p.m. Reagan Makenzie entered into this world...

Immediately after she was born they held her up for Chad to see her and put her in the corner to try to work on her, something was wrongwith her, and I wasn't quite sure what was going on!? I just remember lying there, helpless and unable to move my lower half as the Doctors began to sew and staple up my incision. I remember looking in the back corner of the the small O.R. and seeing teh top of my little girls sweet precious head and a wholebunch of doctors working on her...eventually they wheeled her out of the O.R. and into the NICU to be hooked up to ventilators. I got a small glimpse at my baby girl as they wheeled her by me as I layed on the O.R. table being stitched up.

They took me to Recovery area and my OB came out to me and explained what had happened to Reagan. Apparently she underwent some sort of distress in the womb and made a bowel movement and swallowed it and it got down in her lungs. Which medically is called "Meconium Aspiration".