Today was a busy day at Vandy for Mandy and Madison. The morning started out with an hour long echo cardiogram on Madison's heart. The dr. was looking for any abnormalities or defects in her heart that commonly occur when babies have such defects as spina bifida. Madison's heart appears to be in good health for now but she will have another echo done after she's born. After that appointment it was time to meet with our regular dr. for an ultrasound. While Madison had gained some weight, it's still not enough for the dr. to feel sure that there is not some chromosomal abnormality we're not aware of. But she had gained over a pound since our last visit so we're praising the Lord for that. A new development was the enlarged cyst the dr. spotted in the middle of Madison's brain. The dr. says they don't know what has caused it or what effect it may be having on her brain so Mandy goes back in two weeks for an MRI. We also learned Madison's brain ventricles are dilated significantly more than before- this means she's developing hydrocephalus and will most likely have to have a second surgery to put in shunts to drain the fluid after she's born. The combination of all these things is leading the dr. to believe that Madison will need to be delivered earlier than planned. It's likely that she'll be born in 3 weeks. We'll know for sure after our dr. has a chance to confer with the neurologist that will perform Madison's surgeries. Today's news is not what we were prepared to hear because we've been feeling like things were going so well with Madison lately. But God is still in control of her every heartbeat and movement and we know He is not finished with her yet. There is some purpose to these challenges we are facing with Madison and while we can't begin to understand why, we trust God is going to reveal Himself in an awesome way with her. But we are human and our hearts still grieve for our little girl who is having such a hard time. Our hearts have cried out to the Lord several times today over all of this and we just continue to ask that you not only pray for Madison but for us as well. We're trying to "keep the faith" as they say, but we have to say it's so difficult to do that. We are completely helpless in this situation and it is a very humbling position to be in. Just pray that we will allow God to be our strength in our weakness. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. So, we have to trust those ways and His plan for our family. "The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made (this includes Madison)." Psalm 145:17. We did get a look at part of Madison's face in 3-D today and she is beautiful. Seeing her face is what we're going to consider as Mandy's Mother's Day present from Vanderbilt. The two pics that we got of her are of her profile because she wasn't in the right spot to get a front view. The right side of her face was mashed up against my belly so you see a big blob there.
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