Our very blessed family
Our little busy boy
So, I started this blog months ago with very good intentions of actually writing in it and updating it. However, I'm not sure what has happened with all of my time since then. This time a year ago we were planning the arrival of our soon to come "baby Caleb". Boy I had no idea how much work was ahead of me! I also didn't know how much I was going to love this little child once he came. He has definitely stolen our heart. We wonder what we actually did with our time before he came along!
For those of you reading this that don't know, we had quite the scary experience a couple of weeks after we brough Caleb home from the hospital. As if adjusting to the life of now being a Daddy and Mommy isn't hard enough, we got a call from our pediatrician at 6:30 on a Tuesday evening telling us that they were going to test our baby for cystis fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis? What is that? I quickly searched for it online to see what it was...the doctor quicly explained that it is a genetic disorder of the digestive and respiratory systems. It was most likely a false reading, but they wanted to test him to be safe. I continued to search the subject the next couple of days to learn how horrible the disease was and that most babies that have this only live into their 20's or 30's and don't have a very enjoyable life. I felt like I was on a roller coaster of emotions for the next couple of weeks. We had to take Caleb for a "sweat test" at the hospital. They hooked up electodes to his tiny little arms and he had to wear them for 30 mintues to make him sweat. They then collected his sweat and tested it. We should hear something by the next day they said. The time from then until the next day seemed like an eternity. Our pediatrician called us again the night of the test to tell us that the cystic fibrosis doctor "seemed to think that Caleb did have cystic fibrosis", even though he had never even met Caleb. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. I felt sick all the time. The next day I bugged everyone I could until I got the news, Caleb tested negative for CF!! Above 60 he had it, 40-60 was borderline and Caleb's results were a 7! God's perfect number...Ricky and I would pray while I was pregnant that God would create all of Caleb's body parts perfectly and cause all of his organs to work perfectly. We believe God had heard and answered our prayers.
We went a few weeks later to meet with a genetics specialist. She explained to us that Caleb had two mutations for cystic fibrosis. They didn't know whether he got two mutations from one of us, or if he had received one mutation from each of us. They pricked mine and Ricky's fingers so that we would know who was the carrier for future children. We didn't hear back for a few months, so I finally called. They explained to us that we hadn't heard back because they just didn't know what to tell us. They said that Ricky and I were both carriers and that we each passed a mutation to Caleb. The CF doctor said that he had never seen each parent to pass down a mutation and the child test negative. We wern't quite sure what to think of this news...Amazing, scary, a miracle in our eyes and the doctors. All I have to say is that God can prove science wrong!
Caleb carries two mutations for CF, but has tested negative and has never shown one sign or symptom of this disease. We give God all the praise, glory and honor for how he has worked in our lives. We continue to share our story with anyone that will listen wherever we go. And you can be sure that we told all the doctors that we knew why he was perfectly healthy!
I know this has been a lot of writing, so I will wrap this up with the latest of Caleb. He is crawling everywhere and into EVERYTHING! He is our little explorer and explores everywhere we go. He loves tormenting our dog Pokey, playing with the toilet, toilet bowl brush and anything else he is not supposed to get into. He is the best baby a Daddy and Mommy could ask for...he has slept through the night since he was 5 weeks old and very rarely cries. Ricky and I love having him around and love watching him learn all his new tricks. Yesteday he began standing up by himself, so now we begin a whole new phase! He also enjoys doing head stands everywhere...not sure what that is about.
Here is Caleb showing off his head stand!
