Update - September 4

Today we have all good things to report from the past couple of days. Since Wednesday morning, Lydia has been breathing on her own! They took her off the CPAP to see how she would do and after an hour she was breathing well on her own. They haven’t had to give her any help since! She breathes a little too fast every now and then, but her oxygen level is always exactly where it’s supposed to be. It’s such a gift to see her without tubes or anything to help her breathe.

She has also been awake more consistently and moving around a ton. The physical therapist came to see her when she was awake and said she seemed like a totally different baby. When the therapist moved her legs, Lydia would push back. When she would moved her arms, Lydia would pull away and move her arms to somewhere else. Lydia also is moving her head so much more and using her face to give fun expressions. I’m sorry if this all seems so common place, but from hardly moving at all to this is a huge improvement!


Since she’s breathing so well on her own, the only thing that has to happen in order to bring her home is a surgery to have a G-tube inserted in her stomach to help her eat. Since she still isn’t swallowing (although she sucks the pacifier every now and then), they want to make sure she gets enough nourishment and this is the way to go. If she does learn to eat on her own, it can be removed. There is a doctor at the current hospital who will hopefully be able to do the surgery without having to move her to Yale and we’re waiting for him to see her to determine if he’ll be able to perform the surgery. If not, to Yale we will go. We were hoping he would see her today, but he still has not. We’ll keep you posted about that one and hopefully she will be home soon!

So, that’s all the exciting stuff about our tiny girl. We are continually amazed by the support and prayers on our behalf and if there were words enough to thank you, we would use them all. We know that God has big plans for her life. In 16 days, having done nothing but live, we’re seeing Him use her, not only in our lives, but in many of yours and in the hospital staff as well! They seem to really love her and are just as excited as we are to see her improvement. People are amazed at the visitors who come and we just tell them, she was prayed for long before she was born and is prayed for now. She is a loved little girl. They say we’re lucky that we have such wonderful people around us and supporting us, but we know luck has nothing to do with it. They say she’s lucky to have us as parents, but we know that God ordained her for this life at this time and us to be her parents. We have so much to be thankful for.

Thank you again and again for your prayers on our behalf.