Mina can now successfully crawl up stairs. We have been spending a lot of time at my grandma's house who was diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer back in December to spend as much time as we could with her in her last days. Unfortunately she actually passed away on March 17th. She was an amazing woman and one of my best friends in the world! She was Mina's biggest fan & was a huge reason & contributor in love, support & prayer in us bringing mina home.
So her house has a couple stair steps going into the sunroom and Mina tonight finally mastered them. Turns out all our visits have been great therapy for her ;)
I am so proud of her. She is constantly gaining muscle and getting closer and closer to standing up & pulling herself up on things. She has come such a long ways!
Take the LAST place. Be the servant of all. He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, He said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me- God who sent me.” Mark 9: 35-37
ABOUT MINA:
Mina is a precious little girl recently rescued from an orphanage in Eastern Europe who is now finally home with her forever family! She had been without a mother or father to love her & care for her each day. No one to rock her, kiss her gently or tell her she's loved. She is blessed with an extra chromosome known as Down syndrome, which for her that meant a life of being viewed as worthless in the country she was born into & a life without hope. Because of this her parents gave her up at the age of 6 months when they found out the diagnosis & from there her life progressivly went down hill. We are the Gower family residing in OKC who recently adopted this little angel. She was extremely malnourished and unable to do just about anything when we first met her. She will be 2 in January & is the size of a 3-6 month old weighing 14lbs. She continues to amaze us at how quickly she is progressing with love and nutrition. She has learned to sit up, roll over, feed herself finger foods, hold her own bottle and loves to interact with toys and other children. Her life has changed so much in such a short period of time and will forever be changed! Thank you Lord for putting a burden on our hearts to rescue this little blessing and making her apart of our family!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Introducing Miss Serenity Piper Gower!!
Oma (my mom) made this special outfit for her as her going home from the hospital outfit and to have as a keepsake to pass down to her kids. My mom kept my outfit from when I was a baby which Myla wore home from the hospital and will have to pass down to her children so my mother made this special outfit so Serenity would have something as well.
Leaving the hospital!
I woke up with contractions around 4:00am and laid in bed about 30 minutes trying to go back to sleep and couldn't. I got up took a shower and realized the contractions keep coming and I was in labor. I woke Jim up around 6:30 to let him know and then I just worked on packing our bags and cleaning. After Jim got around he left the house around 8 to go get the videocamera from the office. (Which I found a bit humorous cause he left right before the girls woke up.) So that meant I got both of them up and ready for the day occasionally having to stop when I'd have a really painful contraction. My mom came by around 10 to pick up the girls and I just continued doing things around the house and pausing & squeezing pressure points when I'd hurt really bad. My contractions started out lasting about 1 minute long and 2-3 minutes apart. Then the part that threw me off was that my contractions were getting much more painful but further apart. Finally after tears during a few contractions I told Jim I thought we should go ahead and head for the hospital and literally a minute after saying that I was having back to back contractions and in a lot of pain.
So I wanted to labor at home as long as possible and thought it would be ideal to arrive at the hospital about an hour or 2 before she was actually born. Well apparently my timing wasn't very accurate in when I thought she would arrive because all of a sudden I was in transition labor and having back to back painful contractions as we tried to hurry to the car to drive about 20 minutes to the hospital where my midwife was to deliver. I literally prayed the entire car ride as I had constant contractions and asked the Lord to please help us make it to the hospital because I didn't want to deliver in the car. We pulled up at valet and the man asks "Should I get a wheelchair." Jim told him yes which thankfully I didn't try to walk up cause she would have been born in the hallway then :) Once he wheeled me up to the labor and delivery floor in the triage room to get checked in the nurse tried to get me up out of the wheelchair into the bed. I sat there through another painful contraction and then tried to stand up to get in the bed and started having another painful contraction. I told Jim I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom and he was rushing around like a crazy person trying to quickly line the toilet with a layer of toilet paper & get back over to help me LOL. As I stood leaning over the bed I felt a big gush... my water breaking and the baby was coming. The nurse had left the room a minute and I told Jim go get somebody the baby is coming and I just kept thinking I'm going to have to catch this baby myself. So in comes running 2 nurses trying to get me to get up on the bed so I didn't have her on the floor. Within a minute or two after that in comes my midwife and Serenity is born. My doula unfortunately missed the delivery by a minute. She had a really short umbilical cord so while we waited for the cord to stop pulsating to clamp it she rested on my belly :) She nursed for about 4 hours after that. It was such a crazy hectic time and not quite how I'd imagined it but everything worked out perfectly and what a wonderful experience it was.
We are so thankful for our newest little blessing!
We stayed in the hospital 24 hours so that we could get the hearing test and pku done as well as social security paperwork and birth certificate. Myla came up to the hospital to help us take her home and she managed to lock herself in the bathroom in our room right as we were trying to leave. It took maintenance about 25 minutes to get her out of the bathroom. Poor baby was a bit tramatized and had her pants around her ankles when they finally got the door open. Guess she was to scared to pull her pants up once she realized she was locked in.
Once we left the hospital we took Serenity by my grandmas house. It was really important to me and to her because her health is not very good as I've posted previously. She has stage 4 lung cancer which is rapidly spreading through her body and she continues to decline. Please lift her up in your prayers as well as my family!
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