Another Crazy Day...

It has been two...almost, LONG weeks, as you know at the Hodges home! Today the twins are 9 days old and are stable at this time. I am so grateful for their little spirits and the time I have had with them so far, holding their hands in mine and softly touching their heads. They are fighting hard everday to be here. It has been a roller coaster ride, with so many ups and downs. I have had moments of strength where I know it hasn't come anywhere but our Heavenly Father and all your prayers for our family. And I have had moments of weakness where I just sit and cry my heart out and feel completely useless as my babies struggle every moment to stay alive and miss my other two girls like crazy! Makes me really appreciate the time I do get with them when I see them. :)

Today has been another crazy day, and I thought I would give a quick update as I sit here in the waiting room, waiting for an Echo test to be done on Ethan. An Echo test is a test to check to see if his PDA valve in his heart has closed, or gotten smaller from his 2 rounds of Ibuprofen medicine. If it has closed or is at least showing signs that it has gotten smaller, than he won't have to have sugery to close it, it will do it by itself. But if the size of his PDA valve hasn't changed at all due to the Ibuprofen medicine, then he will have a little heart sugery(which they say it isn't anything to worry about, as it is a simple procedure) in the next two days to close it.

Usually if the valve hasn't closed within three rounds of the Ibuprofen then they do the surgery, but with Ethan they don't want to chance another round, because sometimes, I guess, the Ibuprofen medicine can cause bleeding in the brain and/or other problems. So they are also going to be doing an ultrasound sometime today on Ethan's brain to see if there is any bleeding. So we are just waiting for both these tests to be done and get the results back. We should know by tonight whether or not they will do the surgery.

Some good news is they did an ultrasound on Emily's brain to check if there was any bleeding and hers came back normal, which is great news!!! So we are praying that Ethan's brain scan also comes back normal and also that his PDA valve is either smaller or closed!! Which would honestly be a miracle for his gestation age. Many nurses have told me that Emily and Ethan are really doing good for how early they are and are good size babies for being twins. (It must have been all the broccoli I ate!) Emily is on her last round of medicine for her PDA valve, (which was something different than Ethan's Ibuprofen...sorry, I can't remember all the names of the medicines/treatments that they use!) and she will be having her Echo test done tomorrow sometime.

8 hours later...

OK...so I wrote this earlier today, never getting around to finishing it and posting it. I have some good news and some bad news. First off, the good news...the results came back and Ethan's PDA valve is A LOT smaller!!! Yeah!!! That means, Ethan will not have to have the heart surgery!

Some bad news that came to our family today, is that BOTH Ryan's Grandma (Ryan's mom's mom) and his aunt JerriAnn (who is Ryan's mom's sister) had heart attacks last night. Ryan's mom, Tammy, has been with me since the night I got life flighted into Salt Lake. She has been in Pocatello the last few nights taking care of Madisen and Avery, while I was in Utah, with my mom and the twins. But shortly after getting the news of the heart attacks, Tammy took off to be with her mom. I don't know exactly what the doctors are going to do at this point. Last I heard Grandma Gilmore might have surgery where they put a stint in. And I am not sure what the case is with JerriAnn...I will post another update when I know more. We will be praying for them and hope that everything will be ok. If you could also please add them in your prayers...Thanks so much everyone! We love you all! (I sure hope everyone is doing good... I am sorry I haven't gotten around to checking more of your blogs out!)