Monday Morning - day 6

Friends,
I’ve been sitting in one of my favorite places this morning reading your emails back to us. I normally come to Leopard Forest Coffee Company to study, read, meet with someone all over a good cup of coffee and a scone. This morning I’m here with the normal cup of coffee and the scone but with one new addition ... tears. For someone who said in college that he didn’t have emotions, this whole Samuel thing has been ... well, I can’t find just one word to describe it - overwhelming, stressful, tense, intense, roller-coaster, humbling, hard, sad, frustrating, angering ... The thing that is tripping me up this morning is you ... your love, your faithfulness, your kindness, your prayers, your hearts for us and our son. And really what is behind all of those things ... God himself loving us through you. Maybe the caffeine just hasn’t kicked in yet, but it is all quite overwhelming to me at present.

There isn’t much of a Samuel update this morning, partially because we haven’t seen him yet today. We’ll go up around 11:30 this morning and spend a few hours with him and then go up again after the kids are in bed tonight. Yesterday we got to take Anna Catherine and Colin up after worship. We were hoping that AC might get a chance to hold her littlest brother but it wasn’t to be yesterday as Samuel was needing to be under the light for his jaundice. Colin didn’t have much of a reaction to seeing his little brother other than to say “baby” when prompted. He doesn’t really have a clue what’s going on. After we came home yesterday we had lunch, put the kids to quiet time and took a nap ourselves, planning on going back up after Community Group. However, around 3:30 it was clear that we couldn’t wait till 8 to see him again, so we took off for the hospital and stayed till around 8:30 or 9. We were able to hold him again last evening, which is so good for us. They have been increasing his feedings more substantially than had been planned because he was having trouble keeping his IV in over the night Saturday night. His poor little hand had 4 or 5 prick marks in it - breaks our hearts. Poor little guy has just had a rough go of it. The hope is to get him off of the IV by today since he was having such trouble with it. However, the whole time we were with him last evening there weren’t any problems, so we’ll see. At his 7pm feeding last night he was up to 31ml / feeding. And they were planning on continuing to increase another 4ml every feeding I think till he hits and stays at the 45ml goal (all of an ounce and a half). He weighed in Saturday night at 7lbs and 13oz, up from 7,10 the night before. Good news. It’s funny the things we rejoice in these days: 3 oz gained, green and seedy poop. I’m not sure what he weighed in at last night, we’ll see this morning when we get up there. They weigh him nightly at 9pm - that’s an important marker for how he’s doing overall, so we pay attention to that one.

We tried bottle feeding him again last evening at the start of that 7pm feeding and he struggled mightily to get about 7ml down. And that was with us squeezing it into his mouth. He doesn’t really have any kind of suck response right now. He can swallow some but the whole thing is quite laborious for him and we have to go slowly and take breaks so that his Oxygenation stays adequate. We’re planning on continuing to keep working with him on bottle feeding as he won’t come home with an NG tube. They’ll only release him if he’s consistently getting full feedings either from breast or bottle OR from a G tube. His nurse yesterday told us that we could expect a NICU stay of weeks to get the G tube feedings up to snuff (if we go that route), or a stay of months to get him feeding from breast or bottle. Hard to hear. This is one of our questions for the attending today - what kind of stay are we looking at?

My parents made it home to Carlisle, PA yesterday and Sara’s mom has taken over help on the homefront. Thank you for your emails, your prayers, your thoughtfulness, your love for my family. Yesterday in worship, our friend Tim Udouj preached out of Mark 4 - Jesus calming the storm on the sea. He helpfully noted the 3 questions that get asked: the disciples’ complaint, Jesus’ response, the disciples’ amazement. One thing that struck me about the disciples’ complaint when the sea is raging (“Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?” - as Mark records it) is that their fear isn’t necessarily about death. The question is about Jesus’ character and concern for them ... “don’t you care?” They were in the midst of utter turmoil, gripped with fear and their question is about Jesus’ concern for them. Please pray that in the midst of this storm, we would be able to rest in his sure and demonstrated concern for us. Such is all of grace.

And, if I might ... would you pray for me, that I would pray for my son. I know that sounds crazy & it’s hard to admit it, but I’ve noticed that it isn’t my first response.

thank you,
grant

ps - and to the mounting debt that I owe you, I add this: allowing me to process through much of this by my writing and your reading. It seems that it is helpful for me to write. I never think these emails’ll be long and they always wind up being rather lengthy. Until Jesus repays, thank you ...