Movin on up...

It's the end of the week here in Cincy. Lots of changes this week.
First, I am so excited because our friends The Gilmers came into town last night. You don't realize how much you really miss someone until you see them again. You also don't realize how little of a "life" you have outside the NICU until someone takes you away. We visited with the girls today, did a little retail therapy, and had a wonderful home cooked dinner at The Bradley Home. Lots of chatting and catching up. I'm feeling so much better and more like a "real" person again-ha!
Now on to the stars of our little show.....
Palmer "Sweet Pea" Moran (haha), I like to refer to her as my little peanut. I should use the term "little" loosely though. She is now a whopping 4 pounds 6 ounces. Whoa big girl. She is now taking every feeding by bottle and LOVES IT. She wants more when its all gone but they won't let her have anymore yet, not until she is above 2000 grams, which she is very close to being. The nurse tonight said she would probably leave towards the middle of next week. Hooray! My angel is coming home soon. One down, one to go, right?
Next in our line up we have the Queen B herself, Blakely. Queen B is exactly what she is. She seems to be ruling the RICNIC roost right now. The nurses love to dress her up in outfits and put bows in her hair and have photo shoots as they call them. I think we have a fashion diva on our hands too because when they get her undressed and leave her that way she gets very mad, her heartrate sky rockets, and doesn't come back down until they put clothes back on her. Isn't that hysterical? She got moved to a crib today which is a big step in the NICU. We had a meeting with the surgeon today to go over the results of her MRI she had on Wednesday and go over her next surgery and expectations for recovery. The MRI showed where the remaining SCT is. It has not breached into the spinal column which is a blessing. He is not exactly sure where all of the nerve endings from teratoma extend too. He will have to obviously cut all of them out no matter where they go to. This could mean into her bowel or bladder. So there is a risk she will have nerve damage to her bowels or bladder. We will not know this until she is potty trained or later. If there is damage we will not know the extent is either until she is older. He will remove her tailbone as well as the lower portion of her sacrum. These two things make the distinction between your lower back and butt. So when she is older around 4 or 5 she will have plastic surgery to correct her scars and to give her that distinction. The surgeon suggest waiting until that age so that all possible issues of tumor reoccurance have gone away.
The surgery is tentatively scheduled for this upcoming Thursday. We were and are not really ready for this, but the surgeon feels like she is ready. He needs her skin flap where he removed the outter portion of the tumor to be healed by that point so that there is enough skin to pull back together. If not she will have a open wound for a while and be at several different risk for such things as infection, etc. The surgery will take about 4 hours from start to finish. Such a long time for a tiny baby to be under general anesthesia. It makes me very nervous. I completely have faith in the surgeon. He did save her life more than once already!
Things are moving so quickly now. Palmer is coming home soon, Blake is having surgery and will then be on her road to recovery, and before you know we will be back in Birmingham. Whew!

As always we ask for your continued prayers for our little girls. I have so many prayers that I need right now. Palmer to adjust well to being away from the NICU, Jeff and I adjusting to having a newborn at home again, Ashlyn Kay is coming back to Ohio soon and we are worried about balancing time between her and the other girls, and then obviously for Blake and her surgery and recovery.

Life is moving faster than expected right now, but God has a plan....I am trusting in it!