Brinley's first bottle!

Today was a good day all-in-all. Can I just say that I am so looking forward to every day being a good day again? It'll happen someday but it doesn't seem to be right now :) What made today good? Little miss Brinley had her first bottle today. She did great, surprising the doctors and nurses with how well she took it. This is a great first step as it tells us she can both establish some suction (this was an unknown due to her tongue and cleft palate) and swallow. It was just small beginnings, about 10ml, and some came out her nose and she spit up some but most of it seemed to be swallowed. This doesn't proclude the need for a g-tube but it is a step in the right direction. The g-tube might still be a good option at this point because she will still be able to practice bottle or breast feeding while not being reliant on it for her daily nutrition. It was so great to see her do something better than we had hoped with everything else she's gone through so thank you God for that little blessing! Everybody loved the video I posted yesterday so here are a couple more.

Pray that Brinley stays stable as she had a pretty big O2 level drop (Apnea episode) at one point but eventually got her own level back up without needing added oxygen. These kinds of things tend to stress us out and wonder if there is something else going on we don't know about yet.

Pray for Sarah to continue to recover as sometimes, in all this craziness, it's hard to remember that Sarah gave birth just over 2 weeks ago and that is a traumatic process without all this additional stress. Pray for Alessa and Raina to continue getting healthy; they're improving nicely.

I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who is praying, bringing us meals, watching our kids, giving us words of encouragement, etc. We've been so blessed! Thank you to the guys at work for being so flexible with my schedule; I know there are a couple of you reading this. Be blessed everyone! We love and appreciate you.