Lucy Mae

I know many of you have been anxiously awaiting the announcement of his name. We have finally had some time to decide after the exhausting events on Sunday…

Owen Ignatius Guy

After St. Owen and St. Ignatius of Loyola

His name means, “possessing fire” or “born with the Holy Spirit”. I prefer the latter.

Born 1-13-13

At 8:50am

Weighing 9 lbs 3 oz…he only weighed 9 lbs by the time they got him on the scale, but this was after he went potty for the first time. Since I gave birth to him I’m adding back on those ounces!!

He was 22 1/2″ long

Head 14 1/2″

Chest 14 1/2″

Owen had a very traumatic entrance into this world. He was in the wrong position during birth and ended up with shoulder dystocia. After a grueling labor his head was delivered with a massive contusion on the left side. His body would not deliver despite my best efforts. I was moved two times and with the gentle maneuvering help of the midwife his body finally was delivered with no injuries!

Unfortunately, this birth was still very traumatic for him and he was lifeless, unresponsive and not breathing. The midwives worked diligently on him while still attending to me. They encouraged us to talk to and touch him to help stimulate him. In the meantime 911 was called, just in case. Praise be to Jesus Christ he started to breath on his own, pinked up and began to move by the time the paramedics arrived. They assessed the situation and left.

The poor little guy was as exhausted as I was and over the course of the next few hours he stopped breathing several more times and turned blue again. He was brought out of it by stimulation and talking to him. I think he just wanted to go back in the womb where it was quite and safe. Thankfully one of my midwives and good friends is also a chiropractor and adjusted him after the last time he stopped breathing. He was very out of alignment from the birth. Since then he has been breathing great and everything looks perfect!!

We are so grateful for all of the prayers that were lifted up to heaven on our behalf for this birth. Even though it was not the perfect, normal birth I had hoped for, I am quite confident it was part of God’s perfect plan and we have all of your prayers to thank for our little guy being with us today.

I do have to laugh at what my neighbors must think. Out of four home births the ambulance has been here for three of them! And yet we are “crazy” enough to keep having kids! They are the only thing you can create in life that will last for all Eternity! That alone is worth it.

The children are all very excited and think he’s the cutest baby ever, Lucy especially.

More photos to come soon.

Another prayer request please. Owen has both a lip and tongue tie. While he is nursing well these things mean its very painful for me and he isn’t getting as much milk as he should. We are scheduled to have both of these taken care of on Thursday. We really appreciate your prayers for this procedure and the aftercare.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie

I started to write this a few days ago and saved it as a draft. It was as I was saving it that I realized that I had accidentally written the title as “One Tear Later”.  I had to laugh to myself at how that seemed appropriate. We have shed some tears since last August 15th. Lucy more so than me.

I can’t believe it has already been a year and yet it feels like it has already been many years. I know I have updated several times since and Lucy is still doing great. One year just seems like such a milestone. She still has a good opening. It’s around 29 mm before her stretches and 30-31 mm afterwards. We only have to do them 4 times a week. Of course, these stretches are not my favorite thing to do so we end up putting them off and only do them a few times. She is holding the millimeters nonetheless.

It has been discovered that Lucy will need to have her artificial joint replaced with a larger one sooner than we thought.  Originally, we thought she would only need one more surgery when she was done growing, but it seems as thought she will outgrow this joint pretty soon.  Lucy’s jaw can only grow horizontally, not vertically.  And the horizontal growth is iffy, because the part of her jaw they removed had the main growth center in it.  There is another growth center in the lower part of the jaw, but it usually remains inactive.  There are some things we can do, some oils and cold laser, to help stimulate this area to grow, as well as much prayer.  If this growth center does not kick in she will most likely need a replacement in a few years.  If it does it may give us another few more years.  It all just depends on how uneven her face develops.  This is for cosmetic reasons, but functional reasons as well. If one side is not growing it can throw everything off.  I know this next surgery will be easier as she will be older and we will know what to expect.

Our surgeon pointed out on our last visit that we are banking on him being around long enough to do these surgeries.  This blunt honesty is one of the reasons we picked him, but truthfully I had never thought of that aspect before.  He has no plans of retiring, but he said his body/hands may give out before he wants them to.  I am confident God will sustain him or provide a suitable replacement.  There is no sense in worrying about it, especially since there is nothing that can be done about it except pray.

Other than that life is proceeding normally.  Lucy will be starting kindergarten in a few weeks.  She has already started reading.  She has also grown three inches since her surgery.  Another huge milestone is that the horrible eczema she had all up and down the back of her right leg (it was her right jaw that was removed) has completely cleared up.  Right now, I don’t have access to my pictures that I wanted to post showing the dramatic difference, but oh well.  I’ll have to do that later.  I guess it was a few  months after her surgery that I noticed it was almost gone and then a few months later it was completely gone.  This is great news as most eczema is caused by allergies and poor digestion.  We knew her digestion would get better once she could chew, but it’s nice to see visible evidence!!

Thank you all for you support and prayers and for being here to listen.  It is so nice to know that I will be able to call on all of you again to pray for Lucy when she has her following surgeries.  I would like to ask that you pray for two other intentions…

Lucy’s godmother’s son has been in and out of the hospital for years.  He recently had a surgery in Cincinnati that they thought would be a corrective surgery and lessen his pain and problems.  Unfortunately, he developed an internal infection near the site of the surgery on his intestines and is currently in Cooks Children’s in Fort Worth.  He had to have yet another surgery to place a drain in on the infected area.  His name is Adam and he had is large intestines removed as a baby because of a rare condition.  This has caused years of pain and problems.  We are very grateful he is alive, if it had not been for these interventions he may not be with us, but please pray that they can come to a crossroads where this condition doesn’t cause so much pain and so many problems.  Please pray for the infection to clear up, his body to heal, and for his perseverance.  He is only 9 years old and this has taken a toll on him.  Also, please pray for peace for the whole family.

The other intention is for the family of one of Lucy’s friends.  She is the oldest of 3 children, her two siblings have Joubert’s syndrome.  Her sister is 3 and blind with no motor skills and her little brother Dominic was born Wednesday 8/15 by c-section because he had hydrocephalus (severe excess fluid around the brain).  He weighed 11 lbs 9 oz.  He is surgery today  to place shunts to relieve the excess pressure.  His prognosis is not known at this time.  Please pray for this family and for Dominic’s continued health/recovery, if it be God’s will.  Praise God he was baptized and confirmed on the day he was born.  At the very least, I pray that this families vigilant witness to life will have an effect on the culture of death that surrounds us, especially in the genetic/hospital communities of which they will have direct contact.

Thank you again!  Here is a family picture minus Jake from our trip to Colorado…One day I’ll get one of the whole family.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie

I know many of you were unable to view the video I put up on the last post.  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get around to doing it in another format so you all could see.  Anyways, here it is…

I am now around 15 weeks…Lucy is doing well and very excited about being a big sister.

We are so glad to be able to announce this news. Lucy has been doing really well over the past few months. She has really matured emotionally, probably in part to healing emotionally from all she has bern through. Gods timing is perfect. We had decided shortly after Lucy’s surgery we were ready bring a new life into our family and fully expected to be delivering a baby by this time. I know the stress of her surgery took a toll on my body, but God designed our bodies so wonderfully. Our bodies know exactly when to stop ovulating due to stress. I’m convinced my body did.

I thank you all for your prayers and support throughout all of this. Please keep Lucy and the rest of the family in your prayers during this transition in our family.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie

As you can see from the above photo Lucy really has healed up quite nicely from her surgery.  It has taken some getting used to by all of us, including Lucy.  She can open her mouth wide enough to catch a bird or two and keeping the rodent population down has been wonderful added benefit.  The other kids are getting kind of sick of all the hissing though.  Personally, I love how she purrs when I hold her!!

In all seriousness, Lucy is doing really well.  SInce I last wrote, Lucy ended up having another tooth pulled.  We let her heal up from the major dental work she had done on December 26 for a week or two before starting up her stretches again.  Once I started them up again she started to complain of severe pain in the other molar on the bottom, opposite from the one she had pulled.  This had to come out.  She did great, the Dr. was able to pull it with only the use of nitrous.  She was very brave.  All in all, having only two teeth beyond repair after not being able to open her mouth, for around two years, to properly clean them is still fantastic.  I still attribute this to the wonderful Thieves line of oral care products.

We reached a milestone back in February.  Lucy got her mouth open to 30 millimeters.  You can click on the following link to see her progress.  Lucy 30 mm Video  Shortly after this she regressed for a few weeks, but we are back up to 30 mm again.  The doctor is pleased with her progress and would like to see her be able to open to 30 mm BEFORE we do her stretches.  Right now she can open to around 27 mm before we stretch.

THE LITTLE THINGS

There are many little things that were big stressors before her surgery that now I rarely think about.  For instance, cutting up her food.  I used to have to spend a long time each meal cutting her food into tiny bits.  Also, the mess she made when she ate.  The spoons, oh the spoons, we used to have to use these tiny spoons and make sure we traveled with them everywhere we went.  Shortly after her surgery, I took a picture of her spoon regression.

These may not look like they get that small, but to put it into perspective the one on the far right with the pink handle is a normal baby spoon.  The third one from the right looks pretty small but it was too deep.  When her mouth became too small for the four on the right, I ended up going to Central Market and taste testing the Gelato Ice Cream and bringing all the spoons home for her.  This probably contributed to some of my weight gain!!  These were like the pretty blue one on the left.  Unfortunately, these broke very easily.  Then one day I asked the manager if I could buy a bagful of them and she ended up just giving me a bunch of the tiny white ones on the end.  These lasted us through her surgery and we still have some left.

I also no longer have to worry as much about Lucy getting the stomach flu.  Thanks to all of the wonderful essential oils, Lucy still takes every day, she has yet to get the stomach flu.  In fact, she has only been sick a few times since her surgery.  I no longer have to worry about her choking when she eats or in her sleep.  Not that I HAD to worry before, it’s just that she was at a much greater risk for it.

As time moves on, I find myself thinking about all of these little things less and less.  Sometimes I bring them to memory on purpose so that I may be truly thankful for how easy it is now.  One day I asked Lucy if she could remember what it was like when she couldn’t open her mouth.  She couldn’t!!  Thanks to all of your prayers she made it through and is not traumatized by, what should have been very traumatizing!!

I pray that this finds all of you doing well and that you have a very blessed Holy Week and Joyous Easter.

In Christ’s Peace,

Katie Guy

Thank you for your prayers. We are home and Lucy is resting comfortably. Aside from being upset that her whole mouth and tongue are numb she is doing fine. I’m so relieved that she has all her teeth fixed. I think her entire body can finally start to heal and normalize. As much as a body can be “normal” with all this plastic and metal in it. But God made our bodies wonderfully and it still amazes me how the body can heal, restore and cope with situations.

In Christ’s Peace,

Katie

I have not had a chance to write but please say a prayer this morning as Lucy will be sedated to have her tooth pulled and all her other teeth fixed. We are grateful that we finally found a pediatric dentist to work on Lucy. His office is near the surgeons and he knows him so this helped. I pray that you are have a holy Christmas season!! I will update after it is over.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie

Lucy celebrated her fifth birthday free of tooth pain. The past two weeks have been pretty hectic trying to figure out how to get Lucy’s teeth taken care of. The anesthesiologist with the dentist we wanted to take care of Lucy was scared off by the surgeon. He told him that she would be a difficult intubation in case of emergency. He referred us to some pediatric dentists who work in the hospital. I’ve been in contact with them and trying to figure out what steps to take, how much the hospital would be ($5000 for the facility), etc.

In the meantime, Lucy’s tooth that needs to be pulled has abscessed. We now have an emergency appointment today at 3. I’m not sure what, if anything, they will be able to do. It’s a possibility they could pull the tooth with local IF Lucy will be comfortable enough for the shot etc. Maybe they will be able to use an oral sedative, I’m not sure.

Anyways, as always thank you for your prayers and I’ll will try to update soon.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie

Having just celebrated Thanksgiving, there is much to be thankful for.  Since I last wrote we have been through a frenzy  things.  For starters, what I last wrote about, Lucy’s swelling and fever has subsided and not returned.  We still are not sure if it was an infection or rejection, but either way we are glad it has not returned.  Thanks be to God for all of your prayers.

I have also been working diligently on trying to qualify us for a discount on our hospital bill.  Well, it has taken me two months of non-stop phone calls with a final call saying if I didn’t hear back I would have to drive up there to get this handled.  In the car on the way to pick Miles up from his homeschool co-op which is more than half way to the hospital I decided to call one last time.  Of course, there was no answer on the direct number of the lady I have been in contact with.  At least her mailbox was no longer full as it had been for the past 10 days.  After trying her, I decided to try the main number.  I have called this a dozen times only to sit on hold listening to the recording of Children’s Medical Center.  It’s mostly gone from my memory now but at the time I could tell you exactly what to do to prepare for the start of school, how to handle Halloween and the upcoming glutton induced holidays, from the perspective of a children’s hospital.  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the advice for Halloween and the holidays.  This eating healthy thing may actually be catching on with some people.  Anyways, I actually got a real life person to answer the main financial line!!!  She looked up our account and put me on hold.  She came back and told me she spoke with the woman who was handling our account and she would call me back in 10 minutes.  Yeah right, I thought as she told me this.  I hung up thinking I would still be venturing out to the, severely under construction, hospital with two kids in tow.  Miraculously, she called me back before the ten minutes.  To my delighted surprise she also had an answer for us.   She had spoken with her manager and the decision was finally made on our account.  Figuring in our original bill of around $65,000 and what we have already paid them, they decided to discount our bill by 85%!!!  This was quite a shock and the financial counselor knew I would be so pleased with the decision that I couldn’t be mad at her for not returning my calls.  (She actually said this.)  So, needless to say, my tentative musings of trying to hold some gigantic fundraiser where you all pay to see my children play the piano, recite poetry and dance is not longer needed.  Now to work on calling all of the other places that billed us for the surgery…these are significantly less and one place has already given us the same discount!!

Another thing we are thankful for are the results of Lucy’s first dental hygiene appointment since her surgery.  Obviously, the hygienist was thrilled with how wide Lucy could open her mouth.  We have been seeing this same woman since Lucy’s first appointment after her initial surgery at 16 months.  She has seen Lucy go from absolutely terrified to be anywhere near anything to do with a doctor, to now jumping up in the chair and toughing it out through having bite wings too big for her mouth stuffed in for x-rays to be taken.  Watching her open wide for the exam was an emotional moment.  I am happy that the damage to Lucy’s interior teeth seems to be contained to one area between two of her molars.  Unfortunately, this damage is pretty bad.  We aren’t exactly sure what she will need yet.  BUT…it could be worse!!!  The surgeon asked our permission to pull any teeth that were beyond repair after he got her mouth open durning surgery.  She could be sitting molar-less right now, but she isn’t.  He didn’t have to pull anything during the surgery.  I think this is great considering we could not care for her teeth on the inside for so long.  It is a true testament to the importance of diet, health and the right supplements.  I’m confident that her healthy diet combined with the constant use of therapeutic grade essential oils (toothpaste, mouthwash, internally taking the oils) were a major contributing factor to not only the overall health of her teeth, but the sustained health of her body as well.  Your constant prayers provided me with the grace I needed to care for her in this way!!  Lucy had been doing fine with her tooth up until last week  She was woken up with extreme pain.  Thank God, the pain seems to be coming and going and not constant.  She has an appointment next Tuesday December 6th, St. Nicholas pray for us.  This appointment is just to set up her treatment plan.  Then we need to try and coordinate schedules with the dentist and the anesthesiologist.  Please keep this whole process in your prayers.  We are praying that we can get an appointment to treat her before Christmas and the pain stays subsided until then.  The other day I remarked that we may be having our second annual birthday tooth pulling for Lucy.  Last year she had her front tooth pulled the day before her birthday, which is December 10th and she will be 5.  I just can’t believe it!!!

Some other news to be grateful for is that we finally received the pictures from Lucy’s surgery. Lucy  had been very upset that she didn’t get to keep her extra bone and I told her we would have pictures of it.  So when she saw the doctor give me the pictures she kept insisting that I let her see them.  I thought about this for some time and decided to talk to her about it.  I explained to her that they were bloody and could freak her out.  She quickly replied every time…”I won’t get freaked out”.  As it became clear that she would be able to handle the photos, I realized that I would have to also tell her that she had an artificial joint, since there are pictures of it.  She took this all very well and when I explained that this joint would be taken out when she was around 14, of course, she was very excited that she WOULD be able to keep this.  I will share some of the photos much farther below for those of you that can handle it.  You can click on them for a closer view and descriptions, be patient, they may take awhile to load.

Once again, thank you so much for all of your continued, faithful prayers for our family.  I pray that God will bless each and every one of you with an overwhelming, joyful anticipation of His birth as we celebrate this advent season.

In Christ’s Peace,

Katie

WARNING!!!!!  DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE BLOODY SURGERY PICTURES!! 

WARNING!!!

STOP!!

I’M WARNING YOU!!!

DO YOU WANT TO SEE BLOOD!!!

STOP SCROLLING!!!!

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!!!

OK HERE YOU GO…

[Show as slideshow]

We went to the Dr and he said it could either be an infection or that her immune system is so healthy it is trying to reject the artificial joint. So he put her on anti-biotics just in case.

We will see how she handles the anti-biotic. It’s a pretty harsh one and will probably make her more sick than help her, at least I know what to give her to heal her body afterwards. If it makes her too sick I will see if she can get a shot instead.

I figure either way it may help her. If it’s her body trying to reject her joint the anti-biotic will wreak havoc on her immune system weakening it and therefore cause her body to stop rejecting the joint. It may help too if it’s an infection if any of it gets past her digestive system, into her blood stream, and back up to her jaw…we’ll see. Either way she’ll be taking plenty of natural anti-biotics with alternating pro-biotics too.

I’m confident Lucy will be OK and this is just another one of those things that tends to come your way just when you think you can start planning your days again. I had all sorts of things I was going to accomplish today…instead I’m sitting here at Walgreens. :)

Thank you for your continued prayers and support.

In Christ’s Peace,
Katie