A Note From Jen - Day 5

Autumn had a pretty stable night. She did put out more urine during the night, which is encouraging, but not enough. So she is not close to where she can be to be taken off the dialysis. They gave her a bit of a break from dialysis last night because they were not able to pull off as much fluid as they were putting into her. Now, she is on a special drip to help her urinate on her own more. They are also starting dialysis again, with a stronger sugar concentration to try and pull off more fluid. The renal doctors told us that it is difficult to determine at this point if her condition is a more temporary one or a more extended condition. This will take time. The cells in the kidneys need to learn their job with the temporary condition. Once they learn their job, the kidneys will not only put out urine, but also filter and function on their own. With the more permanent condition, the kidneys will not learn their job and have to have help indefinitely. We are willing to wait this one out and let God heal our little angel. We know that God has a perfect plan and purpose of Autumn no matter how well her body works. We have even been able to see some of His plan in these last few days as she is touching the lives of the nurses and doctors who are working with her.

Thank you so very much for all your love and prayers. Our hearts are overwhelmed with God’s love and faithfulness to us, as well as your love for us. Aaron finally got a pretty good night’s sleep last night. He still needs more rest, so please continue to pray for that. I am planning on getting my staples out today and am still recovering. Our sweet Jayna is doing well with Uncle Eldon and Aunt Vicki, as well as with school. She is being so very patient. We are looking forward to spending the weekend with her. We love and miss her so much. We love you all and thank you for your prayers, support, help, gifts, kind words and kind deeds. Thank you doesn’t even seem adequate for what we are feeling. May God continue to bless you all for your faithfulness.

Written with love and tremendous appreciation,

Jen

Praying For Pee - Day 4

Autumn is holding steady and taking small steps toward improvement. The Kidney team is pushing her kidneys a bit tonight with a Dieuretic "cocktail". The dieuretic has a bit more sugar and nutrients than her body has given previously. And, the wait is on...this should make her body urinate a good amount more. Why more???

Autumn's catheter for dialysis and for urination are inserted through her belly button (most tubes are right now). The catheter is seeping and leaking some dialysis fluids and urine. They have attempted to tighten this catheter with tape and if they can't "fix the leak" the other option is a surgical insertion of a permanent catheter (permanent until another surgery to remove). So...we must pray for pee...(the nurse asked for us to perform a pee dance, ha ha) If she urinates a good amount with this dieuretic they will take the catheter out completely and let her be on her own...The timeframe for this extra urination is this evening until morning.

If possible, we don't want her body to have to undergo the trauma of a surgery, please - pray for her body to urinate above and beyond and produce more than she has yet...In the last three hours she produced 9cc's, 4cc's and 7cc's so it's starting to work...another dosage of diueretic is on the menu yet this evening.

God is allowing us to feel your prayers, support, love, encouragement and much more. Thank you for showing us your love this past week and for many of you in the past months. We are truly blessed. Please continue to give God the glory for the steps Autumn is making - we know they come from our Soverign God.

Jen is healing well - she will have her stiches out yet this week. She's moving around better and better everyday, please pray for her continued healing. Aaron is hanging in there as well but could use some good sleep, please pray for a peaceful sleep for him. Jayna is back at school. Please pray for clarity of mind for Jayna and her to feel very loved while her family is away.

We'll update as soon as we have any news.

- Allison (Aaron's Sister)

Here She Is

Just a few pictures - I will write more tomorrow. She is beautiful and we love her so much. I know that you all are going to fall in love with her also!! All of you are so important to us - I can't express how much help you all have been to us. Thank You!! It doesn't seem like enough, but thank you!!

Here is our beautiful girl!!

One Proud Daddy

Our 1st Family Picture



Resting Peacefully



There is gonna be alot of pink in our house!!



One last picture - shortly before they started dialysis

Update - Tuesday Afternoon

I promise to post some incredible pictures of this little angel tonight. I am going to run home to take care of a few things and will do that when I get home. I did want you all to know that when I just left the room a few minutes ago - Autumn was producing a tiny bit of urine on her own. The nurses and the doctors are ecstatic (as is her family). Keep praying - the Great Physician is still listening. He is still holding her!! We love you all and are so encouraged by your many comments to us on the blog. You are a blessing!!

Update - Day 3

As some of you know, Jen was allowed to leave the hospital in Midland late Monday afternoon. She was finally able to meet and spend time with her baby daughter. Because of that we have been in Ann Arbor for the night. Please pray that Jen's body will continue to heal and she will take care of herself first.

Autumn has had an eventful 24 hours or so. Because her kidneys are not working, she has become very bloated and 25% of her body weight is the waste that her kidneys are not filtering out. They decided to enter a catheter in her abdomen and started dialysis. It is not like most people have where they are on it for 3 hours / 3 days a week. She will be on this indefinitely (until they determine whether the kidney damage is permanent or temporary) 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. Please pray that this process will begin to give Autumn some relief / rest and that her swelling will begin to go down as they slowly remove this waste from her body.

The procedure to enter the catheter went well (they were very concerned since her blood isn't clotting on its own yet) and it appears the dialysis is going well these last 12 hours or so. Because of the pain that was caused her during this initial procedure, they did give her quite a dose of morphine to help her with the pain, which greatly relaxed her body. The problem is that it also relaxed her breathing, so they put her back on some oxygen. Later in the middle of the night, she began to sporadically stop breathing, so they have decided to put her back on the ventilator. Please pray that she will start breathing on her own again and doing it very strong.

Thanks for all of your support, kind words, love and prayers that you have given our family of the last couple of days. We are very grateful and love you all. We know that God is still in total control of Autumn and her situation. We know that His ways are better than ours. Pray that we will understand Him and His ways more in these next few days. Keep praying and know that you are a blessing to this family who is so broken right now.

I do have some great pictures that I want to share, but am limited until I get a place to plug in my laptop. I plan to do that for you all sometime today.

Update - Day 2

Just wanted to give you all a little update - Jen is doing great and looking at maybe being released from the hospital on Monday or Tuesday. Autumn on the other hand is having a little battle still. The doctors in the Neonatel Intensive Care Unit in Ann Arbor are concerned that when she was not breathing and her heart not beating - it caused some real damage to her kidneys, liver and bladder. None of these organs are functioning at this time. They are giving her lots of blood, frozen plazma and platelets. All of these things combined with other treatements, they believe could cause these organs to begin to recover. Please pray that this happens. They don't think that there is much major brain damage, but plan to run many tests tomorrow to check more in depth for this. She looks great and responds to us well. Jayna got to go with us today to finally meet her new baby sister. She talked in her ear and held her hand. Autumn opened her eyes and turned toward her and she squezzed Jayna's finger. These are all great signs for her physically as they continue to be concerned about her nervous system. Please pray for these things with us and for Jen that she may get out of the hospital in the next day or so and be able to travel down to Ann Arbor to meet and spend time with her new daughter. We love you all and are so thankful for your prayer and support this past 30 hours or so. I will take my camera with me tomorrow and will post some pictures of this beautiful girl when I return home.

Our Miracle Baby - Day 1

Just wanted all of you prayer warriors to know, that God reached down today and healed baby Autumn. The doctors and nurses don't know what happened of the 2 1/2 hour ride from Midland to Ann Arbor today, but Autumn is doing great. She has a great heart beat, she is breathing on her own and looks great. She has received a couple of blood transfusions today and they are very encouraged by her progress. When she got to Ann Arbor she was doing great. Join us in praising the Lord today for continuing to prove to us why He is the God of this universe. He is the Great Physician and performed a miracle today in our lives. I will post more later this weekend.

OUR GOD IS BIGGER!!!