Lilly's Story

Well it has been an exciting week for the Gunn family. I have been through every emotion imaginable since Monday. I guess I should start at the beginning for all this to make sense. Warning this could get very long.

Monday – Wes and I found a good deal on a minivan online, but the vehicle was at a dealership in Union City, GA just south of ATL. So off we went about 12:30 after lunch towards ATL. We got there and looked the van over then were ready to test it. I decided to make a quick trip to the restroom so I left Wes and Taylor sitting in the van to go inside. On the way I missed the curb (it was higher than normal) and I tripped. I caught myself, but skinned my knees up pretty bad. I was on my hands and knees then sat on my bottom to try and get my pregnant self up. Someone helped me and on the way up I noticed that a lot of water just dropped down my legs. I thought “great I just fell and pee’d on myself…how embarrassing!”

Well that was actually my water breaking. I was now officially in labor, but didn’t have any contractions. I got cleaned up and we decided to buy the van and finish this process. We had contacted my doctor and things seemed to be ok so we hurried up and left the dealership about 2 hours later. On the way to Montgomery my contractions began! So Wes was driving about 85 – 90 mph while I lay down in the back of the new minivan. We got to Baptist East Hospital about 7:30pm. Lillian Mae was born about ten minutes after midnight.

Tuesday and Wednesday went by fairly normal. We had a new baby, lots of visitors, and anticipation about going home on Thursday morning.

Thursday - about 5am Lilly was in the nursery and her nurse was getting her ready to come to the room for me to feed her. Lilly’s nurse, Leanna, is a great friend of ours and she is now one of Lilly’s angels. Leanna felt she needed to pray for Lilly around midnight and be watchful over her. Praise God she listened to the Holy Spirit and soon saw that Lilly had changed colors. They quickly checked her breathing and some other things. So began the tests. Leanna came to tell us about 6am and so we waited. The pediatricians made their rounds and then came to talk to us. Next, Lilly was looked over by a pediatric cardiologist.

The cardiologist decided she needed to be seen by a surgeon at UAB. So she was moved to the NICU and given some medicine to prepare her for an ambulance ride to UAB. They arrived around 4:30pm and off she went…without us…to Birmingham. Wes and I quickly went home to change clothes, pack and get Taylor. We arrived about an hour after Lilly so she had been seen by doctors and was all settled in when we got there. All of her grandparents and great grandparents were here too.

So here we are. Sitting in the RNICU at UAB hospital waiting on Lilly to have surgery. Now here’s what is going on in her body….

Lilly has COARCTATION. You’ll probably want to Google that one, but basically it means her Aorta (the main artery out of your heart) gets too narrow in the middle and makes it hard to get the blood through. Her heart then has to pump harder to push the blood out. This is one of the only heart problems that can be fixed. Most are just treated, but with coarctation it can be mended and then everything is fine. Lilly is healthy in every other way, but does have some jaundice they are working to reduce as well. The doctors have reassured us that this is a very fixable problem and that is was caught miraculously early (or maybe God pointed it out for us at the right time.

The hardest part is that she is hooked up to needles and machines and I can’t hold her and feed her and be there with her all the time. I just wanted to go home and be normal yesterday morning and now I’m in a whole other hospital in another city. However God is with us in all of this. We are surrounded by family here, and college friends we haven’t seen in ages have already dropped by to see us. We are loved beyond measure and know that God is already ahead of us in this.

Thank you for all the prayers and hopefully we’ll know more about when surgery will be to let you know.