June 22, 2007

Lottie Sue came home on Friday afternoon after her stay at Children's Hospital. She's doing great...still eating and sleeping well. The one upside of two and a half weeks in the hospital is that she's on a pretty good schedule already. She's adjusting well to her surroundings and we are so happy to have her home. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers, we feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. Hope to see you all soon.

June 15, 2007

I wanted to give you a quick update on Lottie Sue. She's been doing very well since her first surgery. She's eaten and slept wonderfullyand has been taken off all meds/IVs. The neurosurgeon has been watching her closely since her surgery. He was concerned that she would develop hydrocephalus, which is essentially an overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the brain. This is a common complication with her initial type of surgery. Unfortunately, over the week, she exhibited signs of hydrocephalus. So, tomorrow morning (6/17), she's going to have an additional surgery to install a shunt, which is a small tube, in her head to drain excess CSF out of the brain and into her abdomen. The tube will be threaded under the skin, so there will be no external sign of it. Apparently, this is a very common surgery, and she will have the shunt for life. Since the hydrocephalus is being treated so early on, the doctor believes that she should be able to avoid any of the negative outcomes associated with prolonged, untreated hydrocephalus.

So, that's the story. As you can imagine, it has been a long, tough first 2 weeks for Lottie Sue, but hopefully this will be her last hurdle for a while, and we'll get to take her home late this week or over the weekend. We've gotten to spend a lot of time with her in the ICU, and she really is a great joy. We love her a ton.

June 13, 2007

We welcomed Charlotte "Lottie" Sue Mowrer into the world at 10:25 am on Tuesday, June 5th. She came out pink and screaming. She was 19.5 inches and weighed 8 lbs 1 oz. We couldn't be happier about her arrival.

She was born with a large cyst on her head that had to be surgically removed. Her surgery was performed last Wednesday, and Lottie has been doing great since then. She is eating and sleeping well. She is still in the NICU at Children's Hospital. At this point, she's not receiving any treatment, they're just monitoring her progress to ensure that she's totally recovered from surgery. We've been spending a lot of hands-on time with her the past week, feeding her and changing her diapers. The doctors are pleased with her progress and we hope to take her home very soon. Thanks for all your kind words, thoughts, and prayers. We feel truly blessed to have such great friends, family, and a wonderful new addition to our family.

June 4, 2007

Hi all, looks like tomorrow is the big day. My blood pressure has been acting up so this morning they did an amnio to test her lung maturity. Test results came back A-OK and they say she is ready to come out, doing this will help me get back to normal.

We'll post more after she's done, now we have a lot of last minute chores to do before she arrives!

Matt and Jen