It's Official!!

...a couple of things actually.

As of last night, baby girl has GRADUATED from sleeping swaddled!

It was her decision... Chris and I watched her fight sleep from our little video monitor and saw her do something she's never done before. She flipped from her BACK to her BELLY! Swaddled! With no use of her arms at all!!!

So we looked at each other and both knew... It was time. We can't have our child rolling onto her face with no way of rolling back!

So we went in there for the "ceremonial final unswaddling." (Fancy, right?) We looked down at her laying there and she had this big grin on her face. She knew...

...and it seemed like an appropriate time, on the eve of her six month birthday! That's right, today was Mercy's SIX MONTH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!! What??? How did that happen so fast, seriously?? I honestly can't even comprehend that.

And as of TONIGHT, she is sleeping in her crib in her nursery like a big girl!!! I wasn't sure if was ready, I cried a little when I laid her down and walked out... I'm still not sure if I'm ready! But she's in there, and she's HALF. A. YEAR. old and I know she's ready.

Look at this face...

The face of my six month old sweet Mercy girl waking up on her half birthday!!

It is so incredibly hard to remember her being a teensy little bitty thing with tubes and wires, flailing around in an incubator...

But at the very same time, I can still hear so vividly the first sound I ever heard her make. I can see my husband's sweet eyes confidently looking into mine full of love and joy, not a trace of fear. I can feel the pressure on my rib cage, and then I can hear it, the sweetest little peep. We smiled in awe and amazement at each other and he looked over the curtain at her. They cleaned her up and brought her to me for just a quick few seconds, and I was enamored. She was tiny and perfect.

I remember that moment like it was yesterday.

Six months ago...

I had this post going a completely different direction, and then I watched this:

That was January 19, the first moments that I spent with her. The nurse wanted to surprise me by having her off the ventilator the first time I would get to be with her. That was the most special moment ever, ever. She would be back on the ventilator after just a few hours, they thought she could do it but she wasn't quite ready. But... spending time with her like this was... amazing. I remember these moments like they were yesterday as well....

But when Chris and I watched that video tonight... we were both brought to tears. I remember the moments so well, I remember believing she would be ok, and not fearing for her life. I remember holding her little hand, telling her I loved her and not worrying one bit that I may not have tomorrow with her.

And when I see her in that video, my mind races to all the feelings I feel like I should have felt, and to the One and Only reason I didn't.

As Chris and I were reading through Mark a couple of  weeks ago, this passage stuck out to me in a big way:

People were overwhelmed with amazement.

“He has done everything well,” they said.

“He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Mark 7:37

Right now, I am overwhelmed with what He has done in the last six months.

Overwhelmed with amazement that He gave us peace when all I see is reason for fear in that video. I can't comprehend how I felt such peace. He equipped me with it.
Overwhelmed with amazement that that baby girl is the same chunky monkey with rolls on her forearms sleeping in the room down the hall. He grew her and healed her.
Overwhelmed with amazement that that sweet little peep is now the sweetest screeching giggle you've ever heard. He strengthened her lungs and voice.

Overwhelmed with amazement that six months ago I had a baby that may not have lived and that today she celebrated her half birthday. He gave her life!

Yes! He has done everything well!

And He has proven Himself faithful to His promise:

"I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10b)

He has given all three of us such abundance of life. The last six months have awakened us to the fullness of life He offers us and we are so deeply in love with the Creator of the universe who loves sinners like us, even laid His life down so that we might experience this abundant life.

How can we not love to express how much we love Him? ...how much gratitude we have for the life He's given Mercy? ...for the mercy He's given us?

How blessed we've been. May we live the rest of our lives in gratitude to our Savior, praising His holy Name, sharing the love He has lavished upon us.

Thank you for being part of this journey. We sincerely love each of you who has prayed for and supported us in the hard times and in the fun times!

Familiarity

So our sleep study with Mercy... for those of who aren't on Facebook or haven't already heard, SHE PASSED and we are OFF the heart monitor!!!

I've been so excited to share this news, and I wanted to just share some about the experience... it was good... interesting... not so unique, I would say more... familiar.

From the minute I walked through the door and sat down outside of admitting, I had a hard time holding tears in as my mind took me back to January 18th, waiting to be seen for my non-stress test.

The chaplain who loved us so well in the NICU spotted us and came by to see Mercy. We talked for awhile, and I wondered if he noticed my wispy eyes as I remembered how he prayed for us and how the Lord used him.

When they came by to bring us upstairs to our room, they brought a wheelchair. I asked if I could walk and they told me to "Relax and enjoy the ride." So I sat down, and immediately was back in the same wheelchair I was in when they wheeled me to and from the ultrasound that was the determining factor in my emergency c-section. The tears were closer and closer to the surface as I remembered the fears and the unknowns. Chris met us at the elevator and we headed up. This time, when we got off on the third floor, we took a right instead of a left and headed for pediatrics.

We got in our room, a regular pediatrics room with a huge crib, a hospital bed and a couch and we visited with the nurses for a few minutes. It would be a little bit before the respiratory team would come up to get her all hooked up and ready, so the three of us took a walk to the New Family Center and visited with some of our NICU nurses. These people will never fully know how much they mean to me and how deeply I love them for how they loved and took care of my daughter for seven weeks. Being close to tears already, I handed Mercy to the very first nurse I met during our hospital stay. It was a JOY to hand her over, and as I remembered the many times I had to hand her back to the nurses, the only thing that held the tears in was the amazement of her growth and the enjoyment of visiting with these nurses who had become like family to us.

After a bit we headed back to our room and waited just a few minutes. I was sitting in the hospital bed holding our eleven pound(!!!) Mercy girl when respiratory came in. They got her all hooked up with instruments that would measure her respiratory rate, heart rate, movement, sats...

So familiar, every bit of it. My eyes were immediately drawn to the screen that showed her sats.... and my mind was immediately drawn back to the screen I stared at every day for seven weeks checking her sats, and the tears began to resurface...

I looked at the band around her foot, the same foot that held the same band four months ago, but it looked so different.

The band on her foot in the bottom left is the same size as the band from the NICU pictures!

When I put her to bed that night and got myself into bed, every bit of me wanted to burst into tears looking at my child hooked up to those monitors. It was as if I was back in room 319, with soccer balls for knees, a whole lot of questions and fears, and a baby down the hall hooked up to machines keeping her alive.

And yet... I didn't. Not one tear dropped from my eyes the entire time we were at the hospital.

Everything was so familiar, so many hard memories were brought to the surface and made fresh again...

Yes, familiar... but completely different.

My baby girl wasn't hooked up to any machines, just monitors! She was sleeping in the room with me! She's just about five times the size she was back then, breathing beautifully with sats at 100%!

The memories were hard, sure, but they are not bad memories.

Those are days, events and tears that we never want to forget, memories we never want to lose. Never have we seen God work in such miraculous and amazing ways in our lives... remembering His peace, feeling His love wrapped around us, those are some of my very best memories!

Never take the hard times for granted, friends. God is working through every trail, and He promises to work ALL things together for the good of His children! Including the really hard stuff... including ventilators, PDA's and soccer ball knees!

Yes... The tears did finally come...

Thursday night I laid her in her bed to sleep for the first time ever with no monitors attached to her body. Before I even let her go, I had to pick her right back up and hold her so tight... the tears flowed.

Tears of gratitude, so proud of how she's grown, so grateful for the gift that she is. The heart monitor was the last hurdle and she is over it! For a momma who struggles with TRUST, this is a big deal! God has shown Himself so faithful in our little family and we are more blessed than we can fully understand!

I'll leave y'all with some more photos we took during the sleep study. She could not have done better! She seemed aggravated with the strip under her nose for a couple of minutes, but got used to it so fast. She slept peacefully for nine hours and gave a perfect reading for the doctor and nurses who told us, "She was the perfect patient!"

Thank you, friends! For all of the prayers that have brought us to this place. The peace of God has truly held us together in the hardest of times, and sharing our joys and victories with you has been so good for us!

Development, Part 2

The Occupational Therapist came today, and we were excited to see her! We have been working so hard on our homework and just had so much to show her!

Now that Mercy's adjusted age is 3 1/2 months, we've moved on to our 3-4 month list of development milestones:

• Begin head control in supine sit/stand
• no more bobble head baby!!!
• Reaches toward dangling object
• swatting, not grabbing yet!
• Looks at hands
• and her feet! ...stares and studies them!
• "Fly Baby" position prone
• so funny... arms and legs high in the air while she's on her belly!
• Holds feet in air supine
• like she's anticipating her diaper changes!
• Beginning to comfort self
• with her entire fist in her mouth!
• Clears chest with forearm propping head up
• getting sooo strong!
• Tracks horizontal/vertical
• she watches us walk across the room when we put her down and walk away!
• Shows anticipation for interaction
• big smiles when daddy walks in the door!
• Brings object to mouth to explore
• not really grabbing things and bringing them anywhere yet, but again, entire fist in mouth!
• Vocalizing more
• she's talking to her daddy right now!
• Rolls prone to supine

...and that's what I want to write about tonight!

Mercy rolled over twice in the NICU. We weren't there for either, but we told the nurses to pleeease record it if it happened again... It didn't but they explained it like this: she would get leverage from the rolled up blanket next to her leg and push with everything in her until she flipped over. So we just naturally assumed that this would be a task we would bring her home with, and that she would just start rolling over all the time pretty much immediately. Soon after she came home, I saw her do it once, and since then, she hasn't been crazy about being on her tummy at all. In fact, when we put her on her belly, she would typically whine and whine until she was all out screaming and we would give in and help her roll over. There were two times recently that I let her whine while I did dishes, and I looked over at her when she stopped and she was on her back! Big girl! I had to leap over to her and smother her with kisses, so proud of her for that! Then... next tummy time it was back to the crying...

...until yesterday!

I went in her room with her and laid her on her belly. I laid right in front of her as she picked herself up with her arms. I could see how hard she was trying... She was picking her back legs up and trying to push them over to the side, and she was leaning so hard... then, it happened!

She just tumbled right over!

I flipped her, and she rolled right back over... and over and over and over every time I flipped her back! She never once even whimpered and she must have rolled over six or seven times!

Just in time for the OT to come today!

I have been begging that little girl to roll over like that for weeks now... but she tackled it right on time! And our OT was sooo impressed watching her roll today!

Impeccable timing, little one...

Do you ever want something to happen or change soooo so so bad, and you pray about it and pray about it and meddle a little, and then a lot, and pray some more but start to wonder if God doesn't really... care? Or maybe He just doesn't want you to be... happy? ...to get what you want? ...to be successful at what you're working towards?

I think back often to my appointment on January 18th... the routine monitoring that led to the emergency c-section that brought our daughter into the world 2 1/2 months early.

We waited and prayed for a long time for Mercy... about three years. There were times that I thought pregnancy wasn't part of God's plan for our family... It was ok, we talked about adoption and got certified as foster parents... We did a lot of respite care with the group homes but the door seemed to close on every child we prayed about bringing into our home... There were pregnancy tests, doctor's visits, phone calls to the social workers, tears and overall a lot of sadness... There were times I thought, with a lot of anger and pain, that parenting may not be a part of God's plan for our family...

...and then there was God. And His timing.

And His timing is impeccable.

You can read this (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mercyellzey/journal/3/0/asc) if you're interested in the whole story... but the best part is that Mercy wouldn't be here today if liver disease hadn't taken me to the hospital for routine monitoring on January 18th.

As we approach Mercy's SIX MONTH birthday next week, I am finding myself unbelievably grateful to this God who doesn't owe me anything but a trip to hell, and yet He has given me grace and love beyond understanding in the precious life He allowed me to carry for 6 1/2 months and allows me to love and take care of today. In this world's timing, we should have lost her. In His timing, He led us through a uniquely perfect path that brought her into the world, brought her into our home two months later, and tomorrow, brings her back to the hospital one last time to run some tests to remove the heart monitor for good. Truly amazing.

How can we not be in awe of Him? How can we not trust in His perfect timing?

Whatever it is you're waiting for, friends, place your trust wholly in Him. His plan may look different than yours, but it's good, so much better than you could ever imagine... and every little detail of it will come together in His perfect time.

I remain confident of this:

I will see the goodness of the Lord

in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;

be strong and take heart

and wait for the Lord.

Psalm 27:13-14

We certainly never imagined liver disease, ventilators or preemie clothes in our plan for our family, but I can tell you this for sure: we have seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and we would not go back and change one second of Mercy's story.

But... to be honest, I've often wondered if I would feel this same way if things had turned out differently. I find myself absolutely in awe of the faith of those who have been down or are going down a harder path than Chris and I briefly traveled...

Please pray for the Davis's. Chris worked with Marshall at Eagle Ranch years ago. He and his wife are traveling a hard path, and trusting God in ways I can't even dig deep enough into my heart to understand... but my faith is strengthened because of it. Read this, pray, grow, and pray some more: http://www.marshallandmary.com/

Thank you, friends. Love you all so very much!

Way to persevere, baby girl!

I tell people all the time that parenting and motherhood have been so much easier than Chris or I expected it to be. We have been blessed with a super laid back baby girl who just wants to be loved on, smile and squeal. She likes to sleep through the night, take good naps in the day, put rolls on her belly, and meet her milestones on time or ahead of time. Pretty awesome stuff, we sure are loving every minute of it!

That being said, transitions are always a little weird around here... specifically when they involve feeding this child.

Transitioning from tube feedings to nursing... incorporating bottles, trying to unincorporate bottles, pumping... pumping... pumping... trying to stop pumping, attempting exclusive nursing... starting pumping again, starting to incorporate full formula bottles, and finally, rice cereal... FROM A SPOON. I can't get over that... we have a 5 1/2 month old on our hands here, how did that happen so fast??

Anyways, all of this has definitely revealed something to me... Mercy and I have this in common: we like to take the easy way out.

It has been extremely hard for me to continue the nursing battle, but we're doing ok and as hard as it's been, I'm super glad that I've persevered. All that 'gladness' aside, every single day I've highly considered taking the easy way out and just going full formula.

And I don't think it's been too much easier on Mercy's end either. She knows her bottles and she stares them down while she's nursing! There were times she would just scream and scream, refusing to nurse until I would give her some milk from the bottle, then we would try again... Thank God, that's not where we are today, but definitely part of the journey!

So when we started the rice cereal we didn't know what to expect.... and it has been such a familiar experience. I had to start hiding her bottle  because she would scream and just look at it, as if she were begging, "Mommy, pllleeeease!!!! This is tooo hard, I'm hungry and this is soooo sloooow!" I gave in a couple times, I cried a few times, I made Chris take over several times... Oh, we were not enjoying this transition!

Watch this:

That's how we have our rice cereal these days! So sweet, right???

Just took a little perseverance on baby girl's part, and we're good to go now! It is part of the morning and evening that I think we both look forward to now. I just can't get enough of those squeals!

Momma was trying to give up... Mercy kept going, through the tears and the frustration and the awfulness of WAITING and not understanding what that new weird consistency stuff was... she kept going.

...and now she is all smiles, loving every bit of it, even acting like she wants more when we're done! So proud of that sweet girl!

Watching her own this really got me thinking about my tendency to take the easy way on A LOT of the things I do every day... as a housewife, as a mom, as a daughter of the King. I have a super lazy streak, and that really contributes to just doing what's quicker and easier instead of what's better and might take a little more effort... not something I'm proud of, but something that's true.

Here's another little nugget of truth for you:
We're not promised ease. In fact, we're promised quite the opposite:

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33b)

That's Jesus talking there... He also said this:

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Luke 9:22)

Talk about not taking the easy way out, right?? And this is what He asks of us:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:23-25)

Nope... not promised ease at all... and believe me, that's not an 'easy' message for a lazy girl!

But one thing I know for sure is this: It. Is. Worth. It!

It's worth the extra effort, the frustration, pain, persecution, hardships... it's worth every bit of it!

Wanna know why?

"...in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)

So why should we care about being loved by God? Because this is what He promises us:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

...and how can we not put in the effort it takes to live in amazement and gratitude for that!

Eventually Mercy's going to move on the next thing, and we'll learn and grow together again... I will continue to look back at these times, that sweet video, and remember those squeals... How worth it it was for her to persevere and put the extra work into eating from that spoon, how squealingly happy it made her... and hopefully I will learn again and again from her perseverance as I seek to put real effort into being a Godly wife and momma.

Where are some areas of your life that you tend to take the easy way out?

For me, it's keeping my house clean, folding the laundry (I really just want to throw it all in the drawers, but ironing... that's really a lot of work!), cooking good meals (instead of frozen pizza several times a week!), relationships, confrontation, really getting into God's word... Sometimes my desire for ease leads to sin, to unbelief, to growing backwards... and that's something I need to work on.

Let's work on it together... Let's do this:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
Hebrews 12:1-3

It's gonna take some effort to break the habit of taking the easy way out... it's time to stop being lazy, friends, and start really living for the One who gave His very life so that you and I might have an eternity of rest and ease within His presence. Pretty awesome. Pretty worth it!