Hope's Newborn Photo Shoot

Hope's Newborn Pictures by Tim Davis Photography

click on the underlined part to go to the page.

The password is: tdpshepherd


We are so lucky to have our friend Tim document our children growing for us.  He does such beautiful work - don't know how we are ever going to choose!
 
Headed home in the morning from our 2 weeks in Colorado... back to life, back to reality.... :)

the verdict is in..:

Well it's official - mom is in REMISSION! She had an appointment with her regular oncologist today and he said her blood tests were normal! She will continue to have IVIGs which will continue to help her immune system. She will do follow up appointments with the transplant doc in 4 weeks and back with the regular onc. In 6 weeks. This is a GIGANTIC YaY God!

Thank you so much to all of you who have been so faithful in prayer and encouragement. Please pray now for not just a very long remission but that she would actually prove the doctors wrong and be cured!

For anyone who has subscribeD to keep up with mom, if you would like to unsubscribe I won't be offended since this will probably turn back into a blog primarily about us, ok really mostly our kids :) starting with a link to Hope's newborn picture session if I can get on a regular computer tonight. (I have written this whole thing on my new blackberry! Thank you T2Wireless)

A Great Great Day!!

We have so so much to be thankful for today!
Hope Rebecca Shepherd was born at 2:46 p.m. 7lbs. 12 oz. 20"  She is beautiful and quiet (so far :) )
Matt put together a quick little video with some highlights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLiNbTo_fmI


As you can see when you watch it, a huge part of the blessing of today was that Mimi was discharged from the hospital and came straight over to be there in time for Hope to arrive!  I had given up on her being able to be here several days ago - so much so I couldn't even ask you all to pray for that - but isn't God so good to us - she was able to meet her little namesake and be one of the first to hold her just like she was with the other 3! 


In case you are wondering, Hope's name is very intentional and has everything to do with what we believe in and are living for: Hope for Mom.  Mom's name is not Rebecca - it's just Becky.  I love my mom but the 50's not as much so we modified to Rebecca.  And if you are a different Rebecca in our life (I know there are at least a couple) please know that you can claim she is named after you if you would like :)

Update on Mom:  She will have to do 2 trips a day - once in the morning and once at night - to get IV antibiotics for the next several days, but she will get to be home.  She is excited to finally get some rest since they don't let you do that much in the hospital! Her appetite is back and I think she seems as good today as she has in the last 2 months.  Thank you thank you for all the prayers!!!!

Sunday Hospital Update

Update on Mom:  She is doing great!!!  She is off the continuous IV which is great - so much easier to get around!  I didn't ask about the nausea tonight when we went up but I think the meds and getting the infection under control are really helping with that.  They did determine that nothing is wrong with her gallbladder which is a blessing. 
Tonight she was obviously feeling better because she was dressed and had her make-up on.  Her room is huge and there is a stationary bike in the corner so today she even did a little while on the bike!  I think she may look as good as she has since the whole thing started! We are hoping that the doctor will let her go home tomorrow!!!  Pray, pray for that!  Hopefully we really are on the upswing now!

Update on Baby Shepherd:  Just a few more hours and we will head off to the hospital!  Didn't quite get everything done on the to-do list, but oh well!  It will still be here when we get home and I honestly think I will feel more like doing things when I can bend over!  Hopefully we will be able to update on here tomorrow from the hospital.  Please pray for a safe and *easy* delivery :)

Thanks for all the prayers - there is no doubt in my mind that you all are making a huge difference for mom!

Friday's Hospital Update

Mom is doing much better today!  They are thinking that her staph infection was orginating in her portacath so they took that out today.  One of her nurses tonight said that sometimes 90% of problems go back to those, so hopefully this will eliminate not only the infection but also the nausea.  She will be in the hospital at least through the weekend because they will make sure that the infection is kicked before they will let her out.  They also seem to have found a drug that is helping with the nausea so Mom had a good appetite tonight at dinner and hopefully that will continue.  They did do an MRI on her gallbladder today because they are worried I guess that the nausea might have something to do with that.  Should have results on that tomorrow, but she is hoping that it has been the infection and that the gallbladder stuff comes back ok.  I felt like she was night and day better tonight - she seemed in much better spirits. 
Thanks for the prayers and well wishes!!
I will update again tomorrow!!

Hospital Update

Mom's fever was down tonight and she felt well enough to eat a little something at dinner.  They have given her a million tests to try and figure out what is going on - blood cultures, chest xrays, even a gallbladder sono.  Hopefully by tomorrow they will have some idea of what is causing the infection.  We are hoping this will be a short stay - again hopefully after the doctor visits in the morning we will have a better idea of how long she will be in the hospital.  Praying that she gets a good night's sleep (always tricky in the hospital where they are poking and prodding you all the time) and that she really makes a quick recovery!  Thanks for your prayers!  I will try to update again tomorrow as soon as there is anything to update on :)

We spoke too soon....

Bad News:  They are admitting Mom to the hospital.  She is running a fever and they have not been able to get the nausea under control.  She had 2 units of blood on Tuesday and we were hoping that would help kick some of the anemia and nausea, but it hasn't and she is running a fever today so in she goes....

*Please pray for them to figure out the nausea.
*Pray that the fever is a good thing that means her body is fighting off infection.  Pray that her body has the strength to do that since she is feeling so weak. 
*Pray that this will be brought under control quickly and that her hospital stay is minimal.

I will try to update again tonight....

Happy Mother's Day!

Oh my sweet mom... I really do have the best one.  Please do not try to argue with me.  I will not believe you :)
Although it has been easy to be thankful for my mom every year on Mother's Day (especially since becoming a mom myself), this year I couldn't even really find words for how much I love her and appreciate her presence in my life. (Sorry about the lame card Mom.  Just couldn't bring myself to really sit down and process all that I would like to write to you - so maybe reading this will make up for that a little.)

Treatment Update:
They are now "symptom treating" for the most part.  In the last week she has really been struggling with low blood pressure.  The only thing they have treated it with so far is giving her more fluids, so hopefully that starts to work soon!
The most annoying thing is still the battle she is having with nausea and keeping food down.  She is on 3 different nausea pills but nothing seems to be totally kicking it and they can't figure out what exactly is causing it.
Obviously if you can't get much food into your system it makes it hard to keep your energy up.  The lack of energy and stamina will just continue to be a battle that she will be fighting for a long time.  On a good day this seems to be a 2 steps forward, 1 step back process; on a bad day it is 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

Prayers:
* That the drs could figure out how to treat the low blood pressure and nausea so that she could just focus on getting stronger.
* For her strength to supernaturally start to recover.

Praises:
* That she has still been able to be home through this whole process.
*  For all the encouragement and support she has received from people - all of you reading this included.  It is so fun to see the stack of cards that she has gotten with people's thoughtful words and prayers for her.  Thank you for loving her in this way.
* That we were able to go be with her for Mother's Day.  I know she wasn't feeling super but it was really nice to just go have lunch at the house with her and the Papa's (my dad - aka Papa and her dad - aka Great Papa).  The girls just love getting to be with her and I think they are doing an ok job of understanding that Mimi doesn't feel good and they try to take it easy on her. 

Shepherd Update:
Some of you may have thought that my lask of blogging was because Hope had arrived.  A lovely thought, but no.  I have been staying up late almost every night sewing and kicking out a few other pre-baby to-do list things.  The late night sewing will probably continue this week if I actually am going to finish all of the orders/projects that I would like to so that I can take a couple of weeks off after baby. 

My dr update from the past week was this "If you were anyone else, this baby could come at any time.  Your body is ready, the baby is ready.  Because it's you though, let's just go ahead and schedule the induction. " (My intrepretation of the doc's words).  So I am scheduled to be induced next Monday, the 17th at 5:00 a.m. which is my actual due date.  I haven't had too many grand ideas about her arriving on any other day as the 17th works well in our "plan".  This is what happens when you are induced every time: you get married Dec. 7th ('01). You have your 1st baby Dec. 17th ('04), your 2nd Sept. 7th ('06), your 3rd Sept. 17th ('08), and your 4th is actually due May 17th ('10).  I completely expect that May 7th, 2012 will be some sort of significant date in the life of our 5th child.

In upholding the promise of cute children pics, I will post a few from this week.  I do have one disclaimer:  I am actually going to put a pic of myself with my girls on here for the sake of celebrating Mother's Day.  Yes, I am fully aware of how incredibly puffy I look so you will not be able to use this pic as blackmail against me.  Please try to focus on the cute little girls in the picture and only look at me fleetingly.  Thank you :)

These are pics I took this week to make our Teacher Appreciation gifts for preschool/First Friends (Mom's Day Out)/Mother's Day Gifts.  Then I couldn't find my camera cord so I ended up using ones already on my computer.

This was the most frugile gifts I think we have ever done.  We made 16 for right around $30.  In retrospect I would have looked harder to find terra cotta pots or something actually made to hold plants because I am worried the flowers might die in these.  But if you are still looking for an idea for the end of the year teacher gift, here's what I did: Bought plastic bowls at the Dollar Tree (Sidenote: I love this store.  I think there should be a reality show on trying to live with only things you can buy for $1.) They were 4/$1 so 4 bunches of bowls.  2 8pk sets of clear plastic dessert plates to set underneath = $2.  I let the big girls each pick out 5 4 packs of  flowers from the Dillons garden center - on sale for $1.59 each.  Plus a bag of potting soil $2.59.  Oh I would also have splurged and bought Miracle Gro instead of regular ol potting soil, but that's all they had.  I used a screwdriver to poke holes in the bottoms of the bowls.  This worked better on some bowls than others, but it got the job done.  I used a sharpie to write messages on the bowls and then let the girls paint on them.  This is where something other than plastic would have been nice since we apparently do not own one art supply that adheres to plastic.  Then the girls picked out 2 or 3 plants for each bowl and helped plant them.  I finished them off by making the little flower sticks with wooden skewers, cardstock and hot glue that I had laying around.  The most time consuming part was finding the flowers I wanted to use to put their faces on, but they turned out cute.  Not only did this add a super cute little touch, it kept me from writing out cards to go with them :)

This is Lucy in real life.  She can be so so cute, but at any given time she looks like she has never seen the inside of a bathtub.  This girl loves her chips and Cheetos.  We are all going to be making some food adjustments when Hope arrives and Mommy gets back on the weight loss band wagon.

And this is Lucy the rest of the time:trying to keep up with the big sisters!

And if anyone is still reading, here is my puffy Mother's Day pic.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Wedding Weekend

So this post is mostly going to be pictures of my kids because Mom is doing great!!  Not that there still isn't a long road for her, but she is continually impressing the doctors and today she felt so good she took a very short little walk!  They are even letting her sleep in a little - she doesn't have to go until Wednesday to get her counts checked.  A couple of things have been fluctuating, but the platelets are still going in the right direction so they seem more than pleased with her progress!

Please continue to pray though for her energy and continued protection from illness. She talked with a gal a couple weeks ahead of her in the process today who had been in the hospital with an infection and had some other setbacks, which was a good reminder that even though there have been some very rough parts in the last few weeks, it really could have been worse.

My Papa (Mom's dad, Delbert) is in town for the next week which is great.  Hopefully we can stay well so that we can see them a little this week.

So without further ado...

This is Macy in the skirt and shirt she helped me make a couple weeks ago.  Kate has a matching skirt but I haven't had a chance to get to her shirt yet.  Macy looks so grown up  - I am still getting used to the shorter hair.

The girls were flower girls in our sweet friends, Rachael and Derek's wedding on Saturday.  Poor Lucy came down with a fever Friday night so she couldn't join in the fun.  She had even went down the aisle so well at the rehearsal :(  If you are confused, the girl in the front is not one of ours!

Wasn't Rachael beautiful!! 
I was sad to not get one with all 3 of the girls in their dresses with her, but I am planning on making them wear the whole outfits over again for Mother's Day so I can at least get some pictures of the girls together!
The girls did a pretty good job with their flower girl duties.  They had decided they wanted to stand up at the front with the bridesmaids during the ceremony instead of sitting down with me.  Maybe not the best idea.  They had gummy bears at the bottom of their baskets under the flowers so during the ceremony they became resourceful and decorated their part of the stage with flower petal/gummy bear smiley faces.  They tickled the maid of honor's feet for a while and Kate flashed the audience a shot of her panties no less than 5 times.  But they were relatively quiet and not too distracting - and they did look awfully cute!!  I tried to take some pics of the ceremony but it was too dark, maybe we will find some from someone with a better camera later on.
Oh yes, and Matt officiated with our other friend Nick and he did a great job too :)

Hooray for the weekend!

Yay!!  Things are definitely looking up!
We have been able to run by and see Mom the last couple of days for a few minutes.  I think she looks great, although I know she still has a way to go before she feels that way!
Her counts have been really good - impressing the doctors which is always good.  I don't know that I completely understand all the counts and exactly what they are looking for, but I do know that they are watching her platelets and they are going up.  She is still battling nausea after they took the pump off earlier this week, but they have been trying to get her on some other things to help with that.  They also took her off all but one of her antibiotics so hopefully that will help her stomach too.
Maybe the other main thing right now is that she is just wiped out.  I think most of us know that when we are sick our energy lags but when we start feeling better it picks back up, but this is different in that she is starting to feel better but it will probably be several months before her energy comes back. 

Prayer Requests:
Pray for continued protection against infection/outside illnesses.   I think we are out of the woods in what they consider the period she is most likely to end up in the hospital but I'm not really sure when they declare her able to fight things off.
Pray for her energy. 

Shepherd Update:
No baby yet!  We will try to get that up here as soon as we can for those of you who will want to know.  The dr. appt this week was pretty much uneventful - not sure what I was expecting him to say but the summary is the same that it has been with all the others at this point: She's measuring a little big, you could go at any time, get to the hospital pronto IF you think you are in labor.... BUT most likely we will plan on inducing on my due date and convincing her to come out just like we did with the other 3!
Sorry there has been no fun pics lately.  The girls are flower girls in a wedding tomorrow so hopefully we will have some after that!

Things are looking up!

Still haven't had a chance to talk to Mom, just texting and talking to Dad and Nancy, but seems like things are really getting better!  Today they took her off of both of her hydro bags - and her nausea one maybe??  Her blood counts are still going up and the drs and nurses are giving her big praises!  She is still feeling very weak, but that's a big improvement over weak and sick!
Hoping that she can find out tomorrow (Wed.) morning how soon before she can start being out and about - and seeing us!!

News in the Shepherd house: No baby, but Lucy pooped in the little potty today - which I discovered when she walked in the kitchen with poop on her hand.  So after a small moment of freaking out we did big praises for her!  Must have worked a little because tonight at bathtime she pottied in it before her bath.  As excited as I am for a kid who wants to be potty-trained, why do they decide that a few days before we have a new baby?  Kate did this exact thing right before Lucy was born.  We'll see if it's a fluke or if she really is ready to do this... sorry to a few select people who I know will probably growl a little when they read this because their kiddos are not interested in potty training... :(
Also FYI I have a dr appt in the morning so we'll see what he thinks about little Hope's impending arrival...

Sweet Kate Quote for the Day:  "Sometimes I like to pray to God looking out my window so he can hear me better."

Thanks for all the prayers for us and Mom!!

A light???

Today was a better day!  Yay!!!
Her counts were up and the nausea was better!  Not much else to update on but it really is looking up hopefully!!  Thanks for all the prayers!  Please keep it up!