A Letter from Whitney

We have had a fairly peaceful couple of days. Tessa has only had one minor seizure since the scary one she had Thursday night(that we are aware of). In a strange way it was encouraging to see, because it gave us a better idea of what the doctors have been telling us to watch for. She started seizure medicine on Friday night and as long as it is working for her, it will be what she'll be on for all her years to come. The only side effect is sleepiness, and so far hasn't been too bad. It has been amazing to get to know our baby girl...since she started the medicine we have seen a whole new side of our precious little angel! We have had more peaceful moments in the last 24 hours with her than we've had in her almost 4 months now with us. It is a blessing to have a baby that finally feels good enough to give us some incredibly special smiles !! We got pictures of them last night and I will share them soon.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. She will have an MRI done sometime tomorrow (don't know exactly when yet) and should know results within a few hours. We will finally know the results of the blood cultures from the blood work they did on Thursday. We will know the results of some urine analysis, which will tell us whether or not the virus is still active in her or not. Knowledge that will help us protect those that might come in contact with her that might not be CMV positive (scariest for pregnant women that don't know if they have ever been exposed to CMV or not- I was CMV negative which is why we are where we are today). Tessa's pediatrician came and visited us tonight and wanted us to know that he is doing his research on all this and has a few things he would like for them to test tomorrow as well. It's a lot of details, so for now I will leave it at that. He also would like them to repeat the hearing screening that was done at birth and also perform an eye exam. I swore to him that I just know Tessa can hear us..I've been singing to her since day one and I know she hears me :) Darin and I are preparing ourselves for a vision obstacle. I don't feel like she has ever really 'seen' Mommy or Daddy...but it's always been perfectly clear that she knows by our voices that we are near. We realize that her lack of vision will more than likely be only one of many obstacles to come, but we'll be taking a day at a time and trust that the Lord WILL provide for every moment along the way!

I don't know that any of the information that we learn tomorrow will change anything. The neurologist has said that the damage to the brain has already been done, it will just be more evident to us the more she grows.

I'm not sure I've covered everything I hoped, but I figured there might be lots more to share tomorrow :)
We are so incredibly blessed by, and thankful for, all the thoughts and prayers sent our way. It's like I told my sisters today: I guess we just know that God hand-picked these two precious kiddos just for us and we're here to make our God proud with the responsibility we've been given!

Thank you all for loving us, supporting us and joining us on this journey with our sweet Tessa Rayne.
-Whitney