Brandon's checkup and Kambree's first two weeks

Here are some pictures of Kambree's first two weeks. The first one is of her on the day we brought her home, lying in the hospital bassinette. The next one is of Emanuel pushing the car seat out to the van. He came with Albert to the hospital to pick us up so he could help with carrying all the stuff you accumulate in the hospital....he suprised me...I didn't know he was comming. He was so excited to see his new sister that when he got to our room he ran in, whipped back the curtain...and there I was....breastfeeding the baby. Emanuel was horrified and immediately covered his face with his hands and dove into the bathroom yelling "ewwwww!"
The footprints are something the hospital does for all the babies born there. If you look close you'll see that Kambree's footprint is right next to Sydney's from last year. What you can't see is that right below those two are Isaiah and Alexandria's footprints from 2006. All four of them are together. So neat.














These are of Bree's first bath. Her umbilical cord fell off at 9 days. The next morning she got her first bath in the sink. Drew took the pictures.

This is Jackson's first picture holding Bree. The other one is from the day we brought her home and Alexandria held her. Hilariously, Alex was the first one of the kids to hold her. Note the look on her face!

Okay, so yesterday was Brandon's check up at clinic. We have good news and bad news. On the good side, counts are excellent so he remains in remission and doing excellent. His counts were all in the normal range. Platelets were 207,000. That is absolutely fabulous!!! His ANC was over 4,000. That is spectacular....there was a time when it was zero for months. His hemaglobin was 12.6. We couldn't ask for healthier counts. We are so thrilled.

The bad news....when we got there Dr. Rob came into our room to have a look at Brandon. I told him that I had called the cord blood bank on Thursday and that they didn't have our results but that they were expecting them any day and would he mind to give them another call since it was Monday now. He shook his head and said "I've already got them." I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn't the news we wanted to hear.

"Not a match?" I asked.

He shook his head again.

"Well, who does she match this time?" I asked.

"Emanuel and Sydney".

Seriously, this time all Albert and I could do was laugh. Dr. Rob printed off all the lab reports for all of us, the kids we tested at the time of diagnosis and the babies born since and sat down with us to show us how to read them. While he was showing them to us we realized that on Brandon's genetic report it shows that for his six HLA types that need to be matched, two of them are blank. Dr. Rob explained that this probably means that the lab just wasn't able to pick up on what those markers were but that it is also possible that Brandon's body has deleted those two markers. If the later is the case, we could be having babies for a while without getting a match. I told Dr. Rob that knowing which is the case is a big deal to me because while I would have a million kids to get Brandon his match as long as it's indeed possible to get that match...but if there isn't much hope of ever getting one, then we are ready to stop. So....we drew more blood from Brandon to send off to Labcorps to get a deeper screening done of his HLA typing so we can determine if he can indeed be matched and what the liklihood of getting that match is. We should hear something in a couple weeks hopefully. Then we'll decide what to do from there.

To say that we were sad to hear that Bree isn't a match for Brandon would be an understatement. Last night was not a very fun night at our house. We know that God has a plan for us and perhaps it doesn't include a sibling match. Maybe God has other paths for us to take. Maybe we should stop. Maybe we should just keep trying. I don't know.

In case you're interested and I know we were...here is how the matches break down among the kids.

Drew, Jackson and Alexandria are all exact matches for each other.

Emanuel, Sydney and Kambree are all exact matches for each other.

Brice and Isaiah are exact matches for each other.

Brandon remains the only one with no match.

Okay, on to Kambree news.

She is growing wonderfully. She is so adorable and so cuddly. I love her so much. Breastfeeding is still a challange. I'd like to breastfeed for at least a year but at this rate, I'm not sure I'll still be breastfeeding in a day. Sleep is a struggle becuase it takes so long to feed her from one side, pump the other and feed her pumped milk from the other side. She developed thrush and we finally have that under control. Hopefully things will improve soon...or its good ole' Emfamil.

She appears to have her first cold. I keep suctioning out tons of thick, green gunk from her news. Gross.

She also FINALLY started sleeping in her bassinette!!! I am so happy. For the first two weeks she would ONLY sleep on me, in bed with me, or somehow cuddled up next to me. Now she sleeps wrapped up in her blanket in the bassinette next to me. I can sleep so much better with her in the bassinette. When she's in bed with me I constantly worry about her.

She was her two week checkup and weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces so I know she's getting enough milk. We go back at four weeks so stay tuned....

That's all the news here. Thanks for the prayers everyone. We really appreciate them. We'll put more pics up soon!