What happened!?

Miss Kyndall's due date was originally June 26th...8 weeks from now. We had no idea she would be joining us so soon! We have been covered with love and prayers by so many that care for our family, so we wanted to make sure to keep you all in the loop of how we are doing and give you daily updates on our precious little Kyndall. Here's how it all started...

We will be celebrating 5yrs of marriage this fall and we decided we would celebrate a little early before Kyndall arrived. (we just didn't know she would arrive the day we got back from vaca!) A week or so before we left for San Antonio Julie started to notice some swelling in her hands, legs, and feet. It would come and go, but we just figured it was normal swelling from the pregnancy. She also started to have some mild headaches, which was very common for her when she was pregnant with Lily, so we weren't concerned.

On Thursday, April 28th, we took Lily to Mother's Day Out at church and we got on the road for a romantic, relaxing getaway, just the 2 of us! We were so excited, we hadn't taken a trip like this since our honeymoon! We had a great time relaxing and eating some of the most amazing food ever!! The bad thing was Julie started experiencing a lot more swelling, the headaches turned severe, and she was having tightness in her chest. So severe, Tylenol wouldn't help and she wasn't able to sleep at night because if she layed down or even sat up, the throbbing would get worse. We thought maybe it was sinus pressure because of the fronts moving through and the humidity in San Antonio, so we tried a sinus headache medicine. It would minimize the pain for a while, but come right back when it wore off. We headed back home on Monday, May 2nd and could not wait to see our sweet Lily, we missed her like crazy! Julie was still feeling terrible, so we called her nurse on the trip back home to let her know how she was feeling and what she had been taking. Thankfully Julie had her 32wk dr appt scheduled for that next day, Tuesday, so her nurse said we would check everything out at the appt. We also learned on our drive home that Julie's grandma had passed away. Between the "royal wedding", the death of Bin Laden, and now our grandma passing away...we were really tired of hearing any type of news at this point...little did we know what news we were about to receive. We got to Julie's parents house where we played with Lily and had dinner and talked about grandma and plans for her service in Houston.

Tuesday morning, May 3rd, Julie was getting Lily ready for CLC (mother's day out) and her nurse called and asked if her 10:45am appt could be moved up to 10:15am because her dr had to be in surgery at 11am. So we moved our appt no problem, and we met up at Presby Plano where Julie's dr is. This entire time Julie had this feeling that something was wrong and she was concerned for she and Kyndall, but we hoped that our dr appt would ease our minds and assure us that Julie was just having some major sinus issues or something.

Julie's nurse took her blood pressure, and made a funny face and said "hmm...let me try again, this time I won't talk to you"...Julie's blood pressure is always normal...never ever been a concern...ever!! So it made sense that her nurse looked puzzled. She took it again and it was very high. So she said get on the scale and let me check your weight...Julie had gained 11 lbs in one month. NOT GOOD! Next her nurse checked her urine sample for protein, and it was positive. Again, not good! We started to talk about the headaches, chest pain, and swelling and her dr decided to admit her for a day or two to make sure something wasn't wrong. This hit us pretty hard because we had been away from our sweet Lily for 5 days now and we were going to be away from her again. Also, the fear that Julie had that something was wrong was actually coming true and it was very unsettling.

Julie was admitted to the hospital where they would monitor her blood pressure, within a couple of hours, her blood pressure reached 188/87 and she had a severe headache that vicodin wouldn't touch. A nurse came in the room and wrapped her bed with blankets and explained that she was at risk for a seizure or stroke at this point. I can't even describe how terrifying this was. Julie's dr was in Dallas, so his partner Dr. Burt came in the room and explained to us what was going on and that these symptoms were not going to go away. She was showing most all of the signs of preeclampsia. He and Julie's dr both agreed that delivery was the only option at this point. Sooner than later. He left the room for a minute to look at her charts again and so we could talk and when he returned he said Julie's dr was on his way back to the hospital and that if it were either of their wives, they would have delivered yesterday...meaning, this can't wait any longer. Dr. Burt asked if he could pray over us and then everything from that point moved very very quickly. Julie had an emergency c-section and in what seemed like seconds later, she was looking at Kyndall! The doctors and nurses were incredible. Miss Kyndall was born at 32 weeks and weighed 3 lbs and 9 oz. Julie's dr had warned us that we may not here her cry like we remembered hearing Lily, but to our surprise within seconds we heard that sweet baby girl crying. It was a sound we'll never forget! God's hand was so obviously all over us that day between Julie's appt being moved up instead of canceled that day and to all the doctor's and nurses that moved so quickly. Talk about a miracle. Thank you Lord!

Sweet baby Kyndall has her own suite in the NICU! We are so blessed to have amazing nurses watching over her every minute of every day while she continues to get stronger and stronger! We wanted to keep you posted on her progress each day so you can check back here each day if you like! She will be 6 days old today (Mon), so I will post a summary of her life in the NICU from day 1-5 next to get you up to speed! She is doing really good and we hope and pray she will be joining us at home soon! We were told to be prepared for her to be at the hospital until her due date, which was June 26. So we will prepare ourselves for that, but we will pray for a miracle that she can come home sooner as long as she is ready and that is God's will! Until then, we will be traveling the Tollway A LOT to visit our sweet baby girl!