Our Baby Girl is Home!!

We brought our precious baby girl home yesterday. Her platelet levels have stabilized and are at an all time high of 167,000 (they were at a dangerous low at only 23,000 before her transfusion last Thursday). Her jaundice is much better and she is still feeding like a champ. We were able to "room in" with her Tuesday night at the hospital. She did great. I actually had to wake her up every three hours to feed her.




She met her big sister, Grace for the first time yesterday. The meeting went better than expected. Grace was very interested in Reese, touching her toes and even giving her kisses. It was a precious moment and one that I will forever cherish. And seeing them together made it real..I have two beautiful daughters! What a blessing!




With this past week behind us, there are a lot of emotions and things we are still trying to process. We have kept one significant detail to ourselves mainly because we were awaiting the results of one test. However, we knew pretty much after a few hours of life what the diagnosis would probably be. We got the results yesterday before she was discharged.

Reese has Trisomy 21, better known as Down Syndrome. Even as I type this it is hard for me to comprehend. We were so concerned with the possibility of Reese having a stroke in utero like her sister, that this never crossed our minds. Also, me being only 31 years old, we were ignorant to the fact that it does occur in 1 out of 877 births for woman my age. The statistical probability I believe is 1-2%. So although the odds seem unlikely, my children fall within the these small statistics.

We do however believe Reese is a gift and a miracle. My OB told me that if we had delivered naturally that Reese most likely wouldn't have survived or would have most definitely bled internally (in brain or intestines) due to her blood platelets being so low. We know God protected her by not allowing her to flip which in turn caused me to have a c-section. I thought maybe there was a cord around her neck but the low blood platelet was something I couldn't see and was much more severe. So thank you Lord!!

I know that many of you are feeling bad or even sorry for us. Please don't feel that way. We may not understand and may never will but we are so blessed and so thankful that God chose us to raise these special children. Good news is that her ECHO cardiogram came back clean..no heart defects or problems. That is great news as many children with Downs have heart problems. She also passed her hearing test and her CT Scan and many more important tests. She is healthy and we are going to be meeting with a genetic counselor soon to ask our questions and get more information about how to make her quality of life the best we can.

We love you and all can't express in words how much we appreciate your prayers and all you have done for our family. We are so blessed to have you all in our lives. We couldn't have gone through this with out you and we know you are there with us on our journey as parents to both Grace and Reese.