Day One- December 6th

Friends & Family:

I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and get an e-mail out. Thank you for all of your prayers and well-wishes. Rylan's definitely being covered with lots of prayers, and we are grateful. She was born at 1:35am, weighing 9lbs.2oz, and is 19 3/4inches long. She is a BIG baby, and super cute! She already has fat rolls on her arms, and neck.

Saturday at 4:20pm, Blake and I were talking about how unprepared we feel to bring baby Rylan home. I told him we really needed to sit down and take the time to make sure all of our paperwork is complete/ready (adoptions require a lot of documents/legal forms to be able to take the baby from the hospital), and that we needed to pack her bag and set up everything for our other kids to be ready to go when we got the call. We expected the call before December 27th (due date), but not 10 minutes after this conversation. Shannon (our birthmother) called and said her water broke at 4:30, and she was on the way to the hospital. Chickens with their head cut off don't hold a candle to the way we acted over the next 2 hours trying to get everyone packed up (all 6 of us). We had a 10 hour drive ahead of us to Lubbock, TX, with a swing by Moody, TX to drop off the kids at Blake's parents' house. As if the feeling of anticipation wasn't stressful enough, I should mention that I was a vendor at a Holiday Market at my church on Saturday, and because I wasn't quite ready, I pulled an all-nighter the night before. So, going on no sleep, we packed our three kids and headed for Moody (Brooklyn is teething, and screamed the entire way there). After getting the kids dropped off and changing vehicles with Blake's mom, we left for Lubbock around 11:30.

A friend of Shannon's kept giving us updates the entire way there, and we all decided that if we weren't there in time that we could listen to the birth live over the phone. At 1:35am, we were just outside of Abilene and we heard Rylan's cry for the first time. There's nothing sweeter than hearing that first cry from a newborn baby. It's such a relief. We wished we could have been there for her birth, but hearing her come into this world was the next best thing.

We got the the hospital around 5:30am and by that time, she had started to develop respiratory prolems. Shannon was holding her and she started to turn pale purple and had trouble breathing. She enhaled a huge amount of fluid while in the birth canal. The nurses tried to recusitate her for over an hour. They transferred her to the NICU after clearing out her lungs. She is currently on oxygen, but is doing better now. She's very content, but her comfort could be due to the magnesium Shannon had during labor. It has a calming effect on the baby after the birth. Her true demeanor will be more obvious within the next 2-3 days.

Doctors say that babies generally stay in the NICU until their due date, but we know from past experience with Ashlyn that they do this to be on the conservative side in case something goes wrong to prepare parents for the worse. Blake is only off this week, and will be headed back to Houston on Sunday regardless, but I will be here in Lubbock until she can come home. Please pray that we can make this transition easily (arrangements for our 3 other girls, travel, etc.)

We are very fortunate to be staying at the Ronald McDonald House at University Medical Center. It is free for NICU parents from out of town, and they provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well. It's run by volunteer groups, and we are excited to be able to stay there. What a blessing! We have daily chores that we have to complete, and today there was a sign on our door that said, "Your chores have been done for you today by St. John's United Methodist Church Youth group." They said that various groups will come in and do that on a regular basis. They also have a room in the hospital that we can go and hang out in, get on the internet, watch TV, drink coffee, and take a nap. What a great program for parents going through this unexpectedly and under the amount of stress that this causes.

Shannon is doing fine, and will be (thankfully) having a tubal ligation tomorrow afternoon. She'll be around for a few more days. She cannot sign papers until 48 hours after the baby is born, so we should have the official OK by Tuesday morning.

Rylan, for now is named Madeline Raine Nolan and she seems to be oblivious as to what's going on around her. She's ready to get all of the wires out of her throat/off her head. She keeps pulling the one out of her mouth.

Today, I put my hand on her leg, and she gently placed her hand on top of my hand (as if trying to tell me she was glad we were there). So sweet. She hasn't eaten yet. They want to wait until tomorrow, and will probably start feeding her through the tube inher stomach. Hopefully soon I'll be able to feed her. (I'd take just being able to hold her).

Thank you again for all of your prayers. Please continue to pray for her and her full recovery. I've attached some pictures of her for you to see. Texting us is the best way to give us messages. The NICU will not allowed cell phone usage in the NICU, but we can text. I'll send out an update as they come to us.

Blake & Casey