Tuesday Morning - Josiah Update

I'm passing through one of the rites of fatherhood: all the days are blurring into one and I don't know today's date ;)

So we just had the radiologist and ultra sound technician come in to see Josiah. They examined his brain and abdomen. We won't have any official results until this afternoon (which I think is a pretty short wait!) but this is what they can see right now:

Josiah's brain is looking good except that his opennings are a little bigger than normal. This sometimes happens with babies who are pre-mature and there can be a million reasons for this. The doctors will have a closer look at the images and will let us know what they think.

In regards to his abdomen, all of his organs are doing great. Josiah does have a horseshoe kidney (2 kidneys that are attached) but it's no concern at all since they are placed higher on his body and won't cause any problems. Josiah does have some small hernias in his groin area and the doctors will let us know what they would like to do about that. Because they are small, most likely the doctors will let the hernias work themselves out. Finally - I don't think I mentioned this yet - Josiah's testes haven't dropped yet (don't snicker! - OK fine, snicker if you want ... it is a funny word!!). This happens with newborns and premies so we're not concerned. Often they drop on their own and if they don't, doctors can do surgery down the road.

So, there you have it. That is the latest and greatest on Josiah's medical condition. We not out of the dark yet, but we've been really encouraged through all of this. Josiah is continuing to eat and breathe well, but he is still in an incubator. I can't remember if I mentioned it, but Josiah was moved into another room down the nursery hallway because he was doing well and didn't need the special level of care (they also need his space in the NICU). We are still in the same area/lobby so don't feel like you're going to get lost again trying to find us!

I also think I forgot to mention this: the meaning of Josiah's name! We always like the name Josiah, but we never had it on our 'short list' because there are already two Josiah's in our church. We had long list of potential names but none of them did it for us and we starting to get a little flustered as the clock continued to tick. Last Sunday we said "Who cares!" and we decided that if we had a boy we were going to call him Josiah Andrew (the middle name wasn't as hard to come up with!) Just in time eh?!

Well, we never bothered double-checking the meaning of 'Josiah', though we did know that it had biblical origins. So Friday evening after Josiah was born, I quickly flipped through our baby name book when I scooted back to the house to pick up stuff and drop off the car. I was SO ENCOURAGED to discover that 'Josiah' means "the Lord supports"! How cool is that?! God is so awesome. It was a huge reminder to us that Josiah is really in God's hands and that will be taking care of him.

Anyways, I'll try to give you guys another post this evening after the doctors get back to us with the ultra sound results.

If you are planning to come in, you can always try our cell phone. If you get the mailbox, just leave a message because we'll try to check it once in a while. Another idea is leave me an email at my Hotmail account (andyman_sdg@hotmail.com) since they have a computer here in the lobby and my cell phone has to be turned off here.

Thanks again for all your prayers and visits! We feel so loved.

Grace & Peace.
- Andrew, Marie & Josiah