Look What God Can Do

My sweet little boy will be turning 5 in the next few weeks! There was a time that I never would have thought that we would make it to any of his birthdays. I have a constant reminder of what God can do living in my home. Obviously God knew I would need a lot of reminding of just how awesome He is. When I was 24 weeks pregnant with Andrew I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and at 29 weeks I was put in the hospital with the knowledge that Andrew would be born within the week. He was born on July 29, 2005 at 9:13 p.m. through emergency c-section. When Andrew was first born he weighed 2lbs and 4oz. Even that small he looked just like Christopher. For such a small preemie he did really well. We took him home on October 1 just 3 days before my original due date! But on November 30, which is Chris's birthday, he went back into the hospital and this time was not so great. This was probably the longest day of my life. Andrew was driven by ambulance from where we lived to about 60 miles north to Arkansas Children's Hospital. Once we got there my baby was gray and was so dehydrated that they could not get an IV in him. According to the doctors Andrew should have never lived past this day. His blood sugar was a 3, I don't know a lot about this but I know this is bad, really bad. His blood pressure was so low that he should have been in a coma but instead he was awake and alert throughout all of this. For about six hours the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him except there was some mass in his stomach area. It was so large that they could not figure out what it was or where it was. Finally the doctors came to Chris and I and told us they needed to do exploratory surgery to figure out what was going on and if they didn't he would not survive the night. So around 10 pm that night they wheel Andrew to surgery and about an hour later his surgeon comes out and informs us that he had a bowel obstruction. It was roughly the size of a grapefruit, at this time Andrew was barely six pounds. This should have ruptured but it didn't. Things got better after this day but there were lots of little bumps and two more surgeries along the way. We finally went home in February 2006. He had to go back in March for his last surgery to put his small intestine back together. Ever since then Andrew has been a perfectly healthy and happy kid. Each year reminds of what could have been and the incredible miracle God granted me. There is nothing to small or to big for God and I thank Him for my miraculous reminder, Andrew.