Several have asked why Jack and Brooklyn can’t be held together so I thought I’d clarify. The only reason is that Britton’s bed is between theirs and the cords that they remain tethered to will not reach far enough for them to be held together. The unfortunate thing about holding a baby in the NICU is that they are hooked up to a feeding tube, a heart monitor, a temperature monitor, a C-Pap or other breathing device, or any number of other little cords and tubes at any given time. Because of this they can’t venture too far from their little incubators.

God Bless,
Ethan
www.JonesLife.net

It turns out that Lila was not responding to the meds they gave her to close one of the holes in her heart (the PDA) after all. Though they couldn’t hear the murmur any longer, the echo cardiogram they performed on her today not only confirmed the hole is still there, but also that it is a very large hole (the fact that it is very large is probably why they couldn’t hear it any longer). At this point, they are stepping up the meds to make a last ditch effort to get her to respond, but the doctors are not real optimistic that it will do the trick. If it does not close on its own and does not close because of the meds, the only options will be to wait it out or to operate.

She is not showing any ill effects from the hole at the moment, but there is still plenty of concern that she will begin to have issues. The question for us will be do we go ahead and operate while she is doing well so that she can handle the operation better or do we wait until she starts to have issues before we operate. Clearly, this is not a decision Casey and I would like to be faced with!

We were contacted through the blog by a mother of triplets whose child had to go through this operation. She said that it went great and her daughter did much better once everything was over. Thank you, Shelley, for your words of encouragement! I don’t believe that this is an all too uncommon thing for premies to go through, but it is a scary one nonetheless. We should know something in the next couple of days. In the meantime, please pray for Lila’s little heart!

God Bless,
Ethan
www.JonesLife.net

Casey just told me this little tidbit from a friend today and I had to share. This is the cool kind of thing we get to experience several times a week…

One of Casey’s mom’s good friends came from Denton today to our baby shower. She drove four hours to get here, stayed for an hour or so, then drove four hours home…totally awesome, but not the reason for this blog.

This is why I write tonight – she told Casey that she prays for the babies every day and that one time while she was praying, she felt an overwhelming sense that she should “pick one.” So she did – she picked Lila Addison as her “one”. And from that day forward, she has said her prayer for the babies and then she says a prayer specifically for Lila. How cool is that? Little girl isn’t even born yet and she already has a prayer warrior assigned to her…VERY COOL!!

This is exactly what I mean when I say the response and the love that we have gotten from everyone has been so uplifting! It gives us such an incredible sense of the power at work in these babies’ lives when we have these encounters! Thank you, Jan, for the love that you’ve shown our family, the quints, and especially little Lila Addison!!

God Bless,
Ethan
http://www.joneslife.net/