Serenity: 4 weeks 3 days (Gestation age: 28 weeks 5 days)

So even though Serenity is 4 weeks and 3 days old, today is her one month birthday!
I really have had zero expectations as far as how long we would have with our baby girl, so hitting the one month mark makes my heart happy.

This morning, though, did not start out very happy. I woke up to a phone call from Serenity's nurse telling me that Serenity had for sure perforated again, and that they needed me to come to the hospital to discuss some other things and sign paperwork.

Getting to the hospital, the nurse explained to me that when the doctor had seen that Serenity had perforated, they started talking exploratory surgery right away. The nurse did not feel okay with that. She felt Serenity to be too small, and just didn't have a good feeling about it. Ryan and I didn't feel okay with major surgery either. Especially if there were other options.

When all of the doctors and surgeons showed up in the NICU and crowded around Serenity's isolate, they discussed our two options. Two. That's it. Not my favorite number when it comes to options, but it's better than one.

They told me that we could opt to do the exploratory surgery so they could get in there, find out what the problem is when her intestines and fix the free air (perforation) issue all at the same time while they had this window of her being stable. Or they could try doing another drain to see if they could get rid of the free air, and try to wait for Serenity to get a little bigger. However, option number two, wasn't much of an option in their opinion because it was only putting a bandaid on the problem to attempt to push off having to do surgery. But if we were to choose the "bandaid" option, (attempted drain, wait for surgery) we risk Serenity not being in a stable enough place later, and we risk more liver damage from being on the TPN for a longer amount of time since we'd have to push off milk feedings for quite awhile. And the list of cons goes on forever.

So, somewhere in the middle of all of the explanations of pros and cons, I started losing confidence in my original "no" answer to the exploratory surgery. By the end, I had absolutely NO idea what to do. I did not want to say yes to a major surgery for my one and a half pound micro preemie daughter. But the more I heard from the surgeons and doctors, the more I felt like the "bandaid" option was not really the best decision.

Thankfully, I was able to talk all of this through with Ryan. And after much talking we remembered, at about the same time that, since the very beginning of this entire journey, before Serenity was born and I was still in the hospital, that we had discussed our prayers for the doctors and nurses that were given to us. We felt that we had to trust the opinions of the doctors, and trust that God has given them the wisdom and knowledge for each situation. And right after that, I had a thought. Not only had we prayed for all of the doctors and nurses, and their medical expertise. But I thought about the condition Serenity was in the first time she perforated. She looked like she was on her deathbed. She looked"dusky" (grey/colorless). She wasn't moving around very much. And her stats were not very good. But this time, her color was good, and she was moving around and looking around like she felt just fine. Not to mention, her stats showed no signs of anything being wrong. So, I fully believe God had prepared her little body for being ready for this surgery. I don't know what the odds of her would have been for making it through okay if she had not been so stable. But they definitely would not have been as good. So, we decided the surgery was the route to go--even if it wasn't our favorite option, we felt in this situation it was the better option.

What the surgeons found while exploring, was a perforation in the lower right intestine, and they found a knotted up area of intestine in the upper left intestine that either already had a perforation, or it became perforated as they were checking things out. They decided the best move was to cut out and stitch up the perforated area in the bottom right area since it was further down in the "pipes" so-to-speak. And they chose to do an ostomy in the upper left area so that the sewn up perforation would have longer to heal but they could still start feedings. The surgeons also saw a thinned area even further up in the intestine, closer to the stomach that they put stitches in, just in case, to hopefully prevent that area from perforating in the future.

So in the end, the surgery ended up being a good thing, considering there were so many issues that needed taken care of. And the hope is, in about a week we will be able to start feedings again, and that those will go well now because of the stoma. And that with feedings, Serenity will be able to start growing big and strong. Which up until this point, I hadn't really thought much about. But I realize Serenity is still around the same length and weight she was when she was born, which was one month ago.

For now, here are some things little miss Serenity could use some prayer for:
*quick recover from surgery
*no infection/complications from surgery/stoma
*continued healing of brain bleed
*continued healing of lungs
*a growing body filled with strength

Thank you all for your love and prayers!!