Our first glimpse of Miracles.....

This is a similar picture of what the doctors showed us of Lauras brain….

the neurologist said, ”she has Schizencephaly and quite possibly Septo Optyic Displaysia…..meaning she has a piece of her brain missing….in her case on the right side…..she will more than likely be blind and will have seizures……and have severely delayed mobility....possibly even mentally handicapped....”  It seemed that with every appointment the prognosis seemed to get worse and worse…..

I remember our drives home from the hospital would be spent in total shock and at a loss for words...….i can’t speak for kev but for me, inside I was screaming and my heart was burning…..I was scared for Laura….scared for what this would mean for my family…..for Isaac and Kayla…..worried about how I would split up my time for each of them in a fair way….worried that Isaac being the oldest would somehow get lost in whatever was to come of my “time” ……another great worry was thinking of how people would judge me.....judge Laura……at this point by what the doctors told me of what Laura could be I had this sad image in my mind of what her outward appearance would look like….so I was scared of people judging her by that ….also any attention directed my way makes me want to crawl under a rock and hide …..so I knew that would also be hard.

As my due date came closer the doctors seem to become more concerned (which freaked me out even more :S) … Both the doctors and my midwife thought it would be best if I delivered Laura at Children's as they were expecting complications.  My labours with Isaac and Mikayla were fast…..i had Kayla within 20min of arriving at the hospital sooooooo in order to make sure I got to children's on time they wanted to induce me about a week before my due date.

After 5 months of worry….tears….and feeling like my heart would pop out of my chest…. the day to have Laura had arrived…..the one good thing (HEAVY ON THE “ONE” ) out of being induced is that you can have everything planned  ….I LIKE TO BE PREPARED!!! So this part turned out in my favour lol My other two monkeys were settled in with good friends for a couple days and we were off……..

So here I am, MISS IMPATIENT…..waiting for the inducing to kick in….10 hrs LATER!!! about 3 hrs of light contractions then from 12- till the moment Laura was born it was haaaard labour ….like felt she was going to be born out of my lower back labour……but quite honestly I was more anxious than anything else…..over the past 5 months my heart had been praying like mad about the plan for her life and I just wanted to get it started!.....

FINALLY 4:20AM Laura Li Kew was born (I know some of you are thinking 4 hrs of hard labour huh? But for me this was longer than the other two waaaaaay longer ) …..I must say right now I am sooooooooooooooo THANKFUL for my midwife …if it wasn't for her STRONG personality a lot of things would have gone ALOT differently……like holding Laura the moment she was born…they wanted to whisk her away for testing BUT Vera insisted that Laura have time with me since my beautiful girl showed NO signs of stress or complications ) AMEN!

Here's a picture of my sweet SMILEY baby girl about 10mins after being born ... I must add that another thing the doctors said was that she may not even smile…….mega tears just thinking back on this moment SMILES from day one and she has NEVER stopped…even if she is sad or frustrated you can ALWAYS get an instant smile out of her....

After what seemed like only minutes Laura was whisked away to the ICU for a check up and a series of tests.... We got to go up a short while later to see her BUT what i missed the most was having her snuggle in close for our first sleep together.....Laura had to stay in the ICU ...they said her blood sugars were really low....and needed to make sure she didn't have any seizures AHHHHHHH!!!!! ...

Here's my sweet baby girl NOT too happy in ICU.....

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5 1/2 hrs later i said goodbye to Laura and headed home....for anyone who has ever had to leave their newborn at the hospital you understand how incredibly hard this is!!!! There are no words to express how painful that is....leaving a piece of your heart behind....and knowing that she wasn't going to be cuddled like i would cuddle her.....loved with the same kind of love that she would get if she was in my arms....a part of my heart felt hollow.....At this time in our lives i didn't drive, Kev had to work,  and i needed to be there for my other two monkeys.....so as much as i wanted to be there with her ALL the time i couldn't.....we went back in the evenings so i could feed her...sometimes as a family 

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sometimes just me and a family friend....but each time i had to leave my baby behind....and each time the doctors had no reason to keep her there other than "her blood sugars are slightly low"....there were NO signs that anything else was wrong....she ate fine...she looked fine ect ect ect NOTHING like what they had predicted....and NO reason to keep her there....Once again THANK YOU for my STRONG personality midwife who basically told the doctors my baby needed to be with me and they had no reason to keep her any longer! I had the same group of midwives for all three of my kids and each time they were even more amazing!  

FINALLY after a week and a bit Laura was coming home! We still didn't know what the future held for her nor did we have anything positive regarding her prognosis.... BUT we did have our first set of miracles....starting with a smile.........