Answered Prayer

What I love the most about the picture above is Jamin's adorable eyes - wide open! His mother Kelly, my cousin John's wife, was able to hold him for the first time (minus the few seconds after his birth) this Sunday. Praise God! She shared on her blog how wonderful it was to change his first diaper and hear him cry - usually things that wear us down as new mothers, but things that she found incredible joy in since she'd been deprived of them that entire first week (gives us other moms a whole new perspective, eh?).

For the first week of his life, Jamin was heavily sedated, hooked up to a ventilator, and had numerous tubes and needles stuck all over into his little body. After a series of setbacks, Jamin made a complete turn around over this past weekend, improving in leaps and bounds in just a couple days much to the amazement of his doctors and nurses. His catheter is off, his chest tubes are out, he has been weaned off his pain meds, both lines into his bellybutton are gone, etc, etc. And the best one of all is that he is completely off the ventilator and his lungs are working mostly on their own (he still has a nose tube for extra oxygen)! You can read more details on Kelly's blog here and on my cousin-in-law Alysun's blog here.

Although the worst seems to have passed now, Jamin still needs your prayers. He needs to learn to bottle-feed and then hopefully transition to breastfeeding. His lungs have more healing to go and he needs to get completely off oxygen. He needs prayer that the lack of oxygen did not affect his brain functions and that he will not face future complications from this ordeal. And pray that he will be able to go home soon where his mother and father can hold and cuddle him to their heart's content!