Wednesday, April 27, 2011

tough week

sunday fun day? unfortunately, not this Easter sunday. gavin began to get sick on saturday night. tracee and i listened to him moan and groan all night off and on. it's a horrible feeling as a parent when they are too little to talk and also too little to really give many medicines to. in times like that you just have to grind it out. well, we were all up at the crack of dawn on Easter sunday - praising the Lord for conquering the grave (amen) and also praying for a quick healing of whatever was bothering gavin. it became evident that gavin was having a run in with a stomach virus as he threw up his entire bottle just before heading to church. thankfully, he did great during the church service at bethany bible church. it was awesome to finally get to church as a family and to be able to do it on Easter. kent delhousaye preached a wonderful service on the fulfillment of all of the prophecies given about Jesus and how it is not scientifically possible to duplicate what He did. moreover, the fact that Christianity provides a way to God through faith in His son Jesus - there is no working your way to salvation. it is by grace that we were saved, not of our own doing but of God's. it is a gift.
for all of the mistakes i make i'm sure glad to know that i'm saved from my sins through my faith and not by a list of works i have to attain.
we made it through church and had tracee's family join us for brunch. that didn't go so well. gavin was miserable the whole afternoon and just couldn't get comfortable. everything we fed him was coming right back up. we were set to go to my sister's house to meet up with my side of the family for a late aternoon meal but we had to cancel. :-(
by monday afternoon tracee and i were both sick. i headed home early from work with horrible stomach cramps and tracee was feeling the same way. i had my folks come over to keep an eye on gavin for a few hours just so tracee and i could lay still! we were both throwing up at this point and things were getting rough. we prayed that gavin would sleep through the night and thankfully he did. tracee and i on the other hand did not. i spent most of the night around the toilet praying for mercy. i called my dr. and had them call a prescription in for me which really helped calm things down for us. g was still having a hard time fighting through this bug so we were concerned about his dehydration.we kept pumping pedialyte through his g tube as much as he would tolerate. the nurse told us "if he doesn't pee by 1pm bring him in." we knew what that would mean. they had already told us that there wasn't much they could do for him with a stomach virus other than refer us on to the hospital to get IV fluids if he was dehydrated. you all know how we feel about the hospital and that's the last place we wanted to take gavin. we decided to give him a bath to help him feel better and hopefully lay down to take a nap. it was almost 1pm. i stripped off his diaper and sure enough it was wet! (it really is the little miracles in our life that we cling to these days)
late yesterday afternoon he began to take bottles again - 1oz at a time and he was slamming them down and i'm not even exagerating. he was hungry! the food stayed down so we were able to get him several bottles before bed. today he has been on a 3oz bottle schedule and keeping them down so that is great news. both tracee and i are sore and recovering from this nasty virus. stomach flu is the worst.
i weighed gavin this morning and he has lost about 1/2 pound due to this illness. we have had to go up on his oxygen from 1/8 liter to 1/2. that's not the direction we want to go but understand that when he gets sick and his body gets stressed that those things will happen.
the next 3 months are going to be really critical for gavin's development. all of his therapies and support physicians are really wanting to see him make a lot of improvements. we do too. a lot of the things gavin is doing are at the age of a 5 - 6 month old. it makes sense to us. he was born 4 months early and then spent his first 2 months of life heavily sedated and not really in a position to do anything but lay there. that is 6 months of time that he didn't have to be growing and developing like a full term baby would coming into this world. we ask that you continue to pray for complete healing in every area of gavin's life. also, please pray for us as we battle this out everyday too. it is hard and it takes its toll. we have a hard time sometimes seeing what God is doing. i'll keep saying it but we are ready for a break. we want some rest and relaxation and we want gavin to be able to start experiencing life off of his back and sitting up and enjoying his toys from a new perspective.
we love you all - thanks for your support!

jeramy

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