A Gift from God
Today is Brady’s 87th day at Memorial. It’s been a long 86 days and it seems we may be coming to the end of it. Nearly the past month has actually not been spent in the NICU. Brady has been in a step-down area (a good step down) call the ISN (intermediate special-care nursery). Lately the big focal point has been Brady’s feeding. She simply isn’t taking as many bottles as she should be at this age. We’ve discussed the possibility of a G-tube with a number of nurses and a couple of doctors. It looks like either one of two things will happen. 1: Brady will pick up on her feeding and start taking all 8 bottles in a day consistently or 2: she will have a G-tube put in to assist with the feeding until she’s able to do it all on her own. In both of these cases she would be coming home very soon.
Obviously the (majority of the) nurses and doctors don’t want to put Brady through surgery that isn’t really necessary so she’s been given the weekend to really show if she can do the bottle thing on her own or not. Her formula has been changed to try and help also. On Thursday night she had a scare when she stopped breathing and from what I understand it took some significant stimulation to get her back on track. She’d also spit up that night worse than ever. These things combined got our little girl kicked from the ISN back into the NICN. They wanted to really be able to keep a close eye on her if she was going to start having apnea issues.
Due to these night time scares the docs wanted to do a couple of things with Brady. First they wanted to do an upper GI to check and make sure her insides looked okay and normal (which they did) and second they want to do an MRI of her head. The upper GI happened yesterday around 4:30 and the MRI will be happening sometime today. These are precautionary actions to make sure every angle is covered. The MRI is to make sure she doesn’t appear to have anything developmentally wrong with her brain. Needless to say it’s been a long 24 hours.
This coming Thursday will mark her 3 month birthday and boy has she changed! When she first came into this world she looked like a little 1lb 7oz miniature wrinkly old man. Now she’s a chunky little girl who is already spoiled by family other than mommy and daddy. We’ve had a couple of nurses say she’s “probably the best dressed baby in the NICU” and mommy is very proud of that statement. Daddy isn’t as impressed.
In these 86 days we have take nearly 1000 photos and some of them are actually pretty good. There were days when we didn’t have our camera but just had to get a shot of her so we used the phone camera(s). I made a slideshow of photos from day 1 to day 85 so you can really see how our little girl has changed. The video is about 3 1/2 minutes and the music is from an excellent CD that we would suggest to anyone with a baby called Dream a Little. It’s from a series of CDs called The Little Series and the song in the video is “All Through the Night”.
Brady Faith was brought into this world 12 weeks premature. This was a result of mommy having pre-eclampsia and there being a reverse blood flow to/from the placenta. Brady wasn't growing like she should and it would have just gotten worse. She weighed 1lb 7oz and was 11 3/4in long. To learn more about Brady and her family click here.
aunt laura sue
October 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
annnnnnd i’m crying. i love you guys and can’t wait to see all three of you next weekend!
Amber Floyd
October 11th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I’m crying too! She is so beautiful. I continue to pray for you and I hope that Brady will be home with you soon. Much love!
aunt gayle
October 11th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Who would have thought music Dallas was given as a gift, and goes to sleep with everynight, would say so much about our sweet baby girl.The video shows just how mighty God and his love for us is everyday.He still performs miracles and Brady does have the fingerprint of God Written all over her.And we truly owe him all the praise. Love you Aunt Gayle
{mimiG]
Meag
October 11th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I stumbled across your website when Brady was a few weeks old. God Bless you all! You’re amazing and have been and will continue to be in my prayers. I am so happy to hear that you will soon have your little princess home with you!!! I am a first time mom of a wonderful (almost) 8 month old boy and it’s the best thing in the world!! I admire your courage and strength throughout this whole process. I hope that you continue to give updates even when Brady goes home for those that don’t know you personally. I know that I will certainly want to see her progress and how BIG she is getting!! I love the slideshow!
heather morse
October 12th, 2008 at 10:50 am
wow! tears, tears, tears! she is an amazing miracle!!! My Jackson is due in 3 days and I am just stunned at what the Lord has done in Brady! I just stand in awe at the miracle! I can do nothing more than Praise Him for what He is doing with lots of tears running down my face!
Christina Sheets
October 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
She is so CUTE….. It’s so great to see how far she’s came and grown. She’s going to be a heartbreaker!!!!!
Roman Bercot
October 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Erik,
Nice meeting you on Vimeo. Glad to see Brady thriving. Penny and I will be praying for you guys on nutrition issues. Our doctors always told us that nutrition would be the hardest part of the whole process, which made us assume that they were idiots. Clearly surgeries and infections were much harder! But they were right. Gunnar was not a very good eater, until suddenly one day he was.
God is good and we know that Brady will have that developmental burst and start packing it in like our little Moose does. We’ll be praying that day is sooner rather than later, and that He gives you the grace and patience you need in the mean time.
Bekki Araujo
October 12th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
what a precious slideshow! glad to hear she’ll be home with you soon
jennifer Powell
October 12th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
wow…erik…you know I was crying…lol
The song was perfect for your beautiful baby girl… Know my prayers are with all of you… prayers are being answered every day she is closer to coming home!!! I can’t wait to see you and meet the little one! Love you all!
Keith Albert
October 14th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Hey guy’s just checked in to see how Brady was doing. The slide show was great. I’m glad she is doing well and you have truly been Blessed. Erik Just a heads up from the Daddy of a 3 year old. You will go broke on cloths for this little girl.
CRAIG & SILVIA SPILLIARDS
October 14th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
WE WATCHED THE VIDEO LAST NIGHT, TEARS IN MY EYES THE WHOLE TIME. SHE IS GETTING A LITTLE CHUNKY . THE SPILLIARDS FAMILY ARE PRAYING FOR YOU ALL AND THINKING OF YOU ALL. LOVE YALL
Uncle Ant
October 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
what a sweet video for such a beautiful princess i look at the picture of her on my stand in the living room everyday and hope and pray everything is alright and God does answer prayers he is a Great God. i just cant wait till the next time i come home and pray that i will get to go see my little niece and see the best parents that have been there for her this whole time yall have really taught me a lot on how to be there for a child in need and i know we dont talk that much me being so far away but i think of yall everyday and just cant wait till my child and brady faith get to play together and just take millions of pictures as they go through life now im tearing up because i know i wanna treat my child like yall have in the hardest time as parents when a child is born in that situation.