Update on Baby Brynn and Mommy

It has been a while! I guess pregnancy and a toddler can make time fly!

To be honest, we Blythes are in need of prayer!

To catch you all up, I am now 30 weeks pregnant with Brynn, and she is quite the active baby.

Addie is potty trained now! (PTL) and swimming like a champ after two weeks of lessons! Although she has found her independance and I am in the process of reading Dr. Dobson's Strong Willed Child! Yet she is the joy of my life!

I am living right now in a lot of pain. I hurt my back, back in high school, and it flares up from time to time, but pregnancy just makes it almost unbearable. (This is the first prayer request). It is so hard to be in pain everyday, and try to keep up with housework, shopping, and chasing after Addison. I will say that the pain is taking it's toll on me physically and emotionally. Please lift me up in prayer as I now enter the homestretch of the pregnancy.

As I've written about before, my thyriod tissue has grown back for a second time now. Because of this, throughout this pregnancy, my doctor has been lowering my thyroid medication. As of two weeks ago, he took me off of it completely. I will admit, I had a bit of a melt down, because it brought back a lot of memories of when we lost Peyton. But God is GOOD! I called my OB (who is the sweetest Christian man) and he let me cry and worry and he decided to put me in NST (Non-stress tests) right then ( I wasn't supposed to start for another two or three weeks). A NST is where I go to the hospital twice a week to the Labor and Delivery Floor and they hook me up to a monitor and they monitor Brynn's heart rate. The goal is that her resting heart rate will be somewhere between 120 and 160. This is considered normal. (She's been averaging 140) Peyton's only symptom was an elevated resting heart rate of about 180 to 190. We did these tests with Addison as well. Yes, it's kind of a pain to head to the hospital every Monday and Thursday, but I am blessed with an amazing Mom who watches Addie while I'm there at my appts. I am now in my third week of testing. It has had a calming effect on me because I get to see her on an ultrasound each time as well as be assured her heart rate is normal.

Today I had my testing and her heart rate was at 160. Even though this is "normal", I asked the nurse to talk to my doctor to be sure this wasn't a concern since it seemed to have jumped up. He assured me it was fine, but I will admit, I had some anxiety today. The nurse that was doing the test was talking to me and made a comment "you should expect that this baby will have to spend some time in the NICU too, due to your history". Wow! That hit me! I have had this thought in my mind, that somehow, Brynn's birth would be different. THIS baby would be the baby that I would bring home on the same day I leave the hospital. I haven't let myself believe that Brynn could end up in the NICU because it's not on option I'm letting myself entertain. I realized today that if I want this baby girl to stay out of the NICU, then I'd better be on my knees. And not only me! It could take an army of prayer warriors. I want this baby to be healthy and to come home! I don't want to endure the NICU again, especially with a 2 year old at home who won't take kindly to me being gone all day at the hospital trying to nurse a baby in the NICU!

So I am asking anyone reading this, please commit our family to prayer. Please lift us up! Please pray for complete health for Brynn, as well as wisdom for the doctors and a faithful heart for us to know that God has it all in HIS hands. Also please pray that Brynn's resting heart rate does not go above 160, because if it does, then we might have to deliver early, and then the NICU would be inevitable. We really could use a blanket of prayers from our loved ones. Thank you all!

God is faithful! We know that! We have Addison at home as proof of His faithfulness and promises! We believe that God will also let us bring Brynn home.