December 2008

Well its been a while and a lot has happened! Zachary has had a few more surgeries since my last update including having his hernia repaired and a circumcision yesterday. He is recovering well from that. We are anxiously awaiting Christmas time! It is such a great time of the year and we are so thankful that we have such a close family to spend it with! Zachary now weighs nearly 15 pounds!!! He is so big and just smiling all the time! He loves to spend time in his Johnny Jumper and excersaucer. He is one growing boy! He will be continuing with early intervention and therapy as the new year comes. We have set a goal for him to be sitting on his own by the time his birthday comes around! Thank you all for continuing to check up on us! Love to all during this holiday season and remember to keep CHRIST in Christmas this year!

October 29, 2008

Hello everyone! Zachary has been having some exciting days lately! Everyday he seems to be stronger and progressing! At his last doctors visit he weighed 13 pounds!!! Also, they took his measurements and based it on an 8 month old. His length and height were in the 21% range which is great! I'm sure its no surprise to anyone that his head is in the 80% range!! Ha Ha! That's a Stafford for ya! Also, he is eating peas and carrots and really enjoys them! YUCK! He enjoys sitting up and is gaining a lot of strength in his neck! We are so excited that he is doing so well! We love you all! God Bless!

October 7, 2008

Hello there! Zachary is doing so great! His last doctors check up went wonderful and the latest surgery has seemed to be a good one for him! He weighs 12 pounds 3 ounces now and the doctor still says that he would like to see him bigger. He is now eating rice cereal twice a day and making more of a mess than ever! He has truly been so wonderful lately and we are so thankful! Praise God for saving our little boy! We love you all!

What a time!!

Well we have been in TN for 5 weeks now and have been admitted to the hospital 4 times! whew! This last time, we were in the hospital for 12 days because Zachary had another infection in his CSF. For that time, they put in some external shunts to drain the fluid while he fought the infection.

We are home now and he will be on IV antibiotics for the next three weeks. I get to play nurse for a little while! ;) We are confident that these shunts will last us for a while! Please continue to pray for that!

On a happier note, Zachary is starting to smile more often and not just because of gas anymore!! :) I will hopefully be able to update with happier news in the future!

Another surgery...

As you know, Zachary went into surgery last weekend to have his shunt revised. Against my better judgement, I went ahead and took him home on the doctors orders. Yesterday morning after a feeding, Zachary started to choke and I called 911 to take him to the hospital. When they assessed him, they told me I had waited too long to bring him into the hospital and that his shunt was not working properly and he needed immediate surgery. They took him into surgery yesterday afternoon and he did beautifully! I can definitely tell a difference this time. One of the signs that the shunt isn't working properly is that his eyes will look downward consistently. Now after the surgery, I can see his beautiful eyes and he just looks so much healthier. He now has two shunts. One on the left, and one on the right. We are so thankful that the Lord can speak wisdom into us and next time, I'm not going to ingnore it. Thank you all for your continued prayers for Zachary and his health!

Long time coming....

Well as you can see it has been a tremendously long time since we have posted on here! There has been a lot going on since little Zachary came home! First off, we have finally gotten home to Tennessee and are in the process of buying our first home! Also, after being home for a week, I measured Zachary's head circumference and it was up 2.5 cm in one week. They told me to keep a close eye on that and that it shouldn't be more than 2 a week. Well, I thought I was being over paranoid so I went ahead and took him to the E.R. at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital to get him checked out. Turns out my motherly instinct was right on! They took him into surgery the very next morning to fix his shunt cause it had malfunctioned! He recovered beautifully but is still having some pain. He is getting so big! He now weighs 10 pounds 2 ounces! Camden has been such a wonderful big brother! He is constantly on passy duty if Zachary starts to get upset! He says he loves being a big brother! We are truly blessed and are happy we can start to move forward with our lives as a family! Love to all!

Going home!

July 4, 2008

ZACHARY IS HOME!!!!

We are so very excited! We were able to "room in" with him last night to make sure that we could handle taking care of him on our own and everything went fantastic! He was dis-charged at noon today and we have been having a wonderful afternoon with him! We all took an afternoon nap together on the big bed and it was so wonderful! Thank you Thank you THANK YOU for all of your prayers and encouragement! We look at Zachary and see the Lord! Our heavenly Father has been so great to us and it is all due to him! Bless you all!

June 30, 2008

We would like to ask for some special prayers this week. The doctors are doing a head and chest ultrasound this week on Zachary to make sure that everything looks good. If it does, and he starts to gain weight, we are going to do a room-in with him on thursday night to have a trial run through the night with just us to take care of him! AHHH! :) If he does well that night then we will be able to bring him home on Friday!! It may seem selfish, but we need prayers to have this go well so that he can be home with us this week! We will keep you updated! Thanks!

June 28, 2008

It looks like Zachary's stay in the hospital is coming to an end soon!!! The doctor told me on thursday that he sees him going home mid-late next week!!!! We are so excited and hope that this is true! He just has to continue eating well and handling himself without oxygen. He is doing great so far! Right now he only needs the oxygen here and there when he is eating from a bottle. As it stands right now, he won't need to come home on any monitors or oxygen! GOD IS GOOD!! We know that if it wasn't for him, Zachary may have not made it this far. Thank you once again for all of your continued prayers! Lets remember to also thank God for the wonderful miracle we have seen through Zachary!

June 25, 2008

It has been an exciting 24 hours! Zachary is completely off of the oxygen!!! Its so nice to see an almost clean face! He still has the NG tube for those times that he's too tired to eat. He is nursing 6 out of 8 feeds and has to learn to take the other two feeds out of a bottle so that he can come home!! The doctors want him eating at least two bottles a day with a calorie supplement so that he can continue to gain weight. We are all so very anxious to get him home! Please continue to pray peace over us in the last couple of weeks as we are ready to STEAL him away!

June 23, 2008

Zachary is doing WONDERFUL! We want to thank all of you for your continued prayers to get him home! He is currently on 1/8 L of oxygen which is as low as it gets. He has nursed every feed so far today (4) and I will be spending the night at the hospital tonight to see if he doesn't get too tired doing it every feed right now. We are so proud of him! Thanks to all who have sent gifts! They are wonderful and we are VERY appreciative!!

June 18, 2008

Well Zachary got moved to the Intermediate nursery yesterday afternoon! This is a big step for him! The doctors say he is stable enough where they don't have to keep such a close eye on him. We would like to ask you all to please have a prayer focus on him eating. That is the last thing he needs to do in order to come home to us! Thankyou all for all of your continued prayers!

June 17, 2008

We almost have a 7 pound baby on our hands!! Zachary weighs 6 pounds 15 ounces! We are so delighted that he is getting so big! He is on minimal oxygen settings and we are still waiting for him to come completely off any day now. The doctors and nurses are very pleased with his eating as well. He is getting more strength to drink a 2 ounce bottle. He likes his mommy best though! Our oldest, Camden, will be headed back to TN this week to have a vacation at Nana's house! This will allow me the time to really focus on Zachary's eating and getting him home!!

June 11, 2008

Zachary is a big 6 pounds 7.4 ounces today! He is just growing like a little weed! I have been nursing him throughout the day and he does very very well! At night when the nurses try to give him a bottle, he won't take it. Obviously cause its not his mommy! He also has been awake more during the day and enjoying being in the swing and looking at his mobile! We are getting so anxious to get him home!

June 5, 2008

Zachary is currently at 3/4 L of oxygen and doing great on that. Before we know it, he'll be off oxygen all together! We are getting a little anxious at home. We feel like we are on the last stretch and we don't want to go any further... we just want him home NOW!!! Of coarse we'll do what we need to but its been long enough already! Here are some more pictures for you all to enjoy!

F.Y.I.

I was asked by my friends to come up with a list of people to participate in a special kind of baby shower. I thought this would be the best way to inform you all that if you would like to be involved please email me with your address. Thank you so much from all of us!

jcstafford07@yahoo.com

Kenneth, Jenna, Camden, & precious little Zachary!

June 3, 2008

Today was a great day! One of my many best friends, Jane, is in town for the week! Zachary was so happy to have visitors! They have reduced his oxygen flow from 2 liters to 1 liter and he is handling it very well. He is also still doing well with his feedings and should be eating more often from me very soon. We are so excited that he is doing well and he should be coming in 4-6 weeks if all continues to go well! We will keep you informed!

June 1, 2008

Well well WELL!! It has been a mighty exciting and busy week. We are finally back home in our own beds and it is wonderful! Zachary has made a huge improvement this week! It seems that the shunt is what he needed to start getting better! He started eating on Tuesday and did absolutely wonderful! The doctors were worried he wouldn't be able to suck, swallow, and breathe all at the same time but he did it wonderfully! He is up to 4 feedings a day. It is amazing how hard it is for his little body to just do something that seems so simple and normal to us. Also, tonight I was able to give him his first real bath! He was so precious and didn't really know what to think of it. We are so thankful to all of you for being so faithful and for checking in on him so much! Once he is able to eat all of his feedings by mouth, he can come home! We love you!

May 23, 2008

Today is a great day so far! When we arrived at the hospital this morning, they had already taken him off the vent and put him on a high flow nasal cannula! He has had no episodes/spells (drop in heart rate and oxygen). Also, we should know by the end of today if we get to go back to fayetteville tomorrow or not. We are hoping so! The doctor said that if we are not back in Fayetteville this weeken, they will have speech therapy come in on Monday and start getting him ready to eat out of a bottle!! YAY! We are so thankful and blessed!