Laughter makes the world go round :)

What a tough girl!

This video was right when we got to the hospital and we were waiting to go downstairs for her surgery. She was in a lot of pain but she was too weak to cry much.


Ryleigh was taking a cat nap while she was waiting to go into the operating room.




This is the day after. If you look closely, you can see some blood on her ID bracelet. Ryleigh decided she no longer wanted her IV and she went ahead and pulled it out!


The white tape on the top of her head is where the incision was made. It is a very small incision and they didn't need to shave any of her hair. She needs to keep the little hair that she has!


This is her surgeon, Dr Cherney :)


Home sweet home!

Our sweet angel

This is how Ryleigh has spent most of the week. On Wednesday Ryleigh could not keeping any of her food down, she couldn't stay awake, and she was just not acting like herself. We called the doctor's office and were able to get her in that day.

The pediatrician, Dr Granwehr, had some of Ryleigh's blood drawn to do some tests. She thought it was probably just a virus, but because Ryleigh was having trouble staying awake, (and with Ryleigh's history), she wanted us to come back Thursday (yesterday).

On Thursday the blood tests came back normal. Ryleigh was only able to eat 2 ounces at a time and she normally has 5 ounces at a time, she was still sleeping a lot, she whimpered a lot, and now she was having a hard time focusing when she would look at us. So Dr Granwehr told us to go have a CT scan done.

The scan revealed that Ryleigh has excess fluid in her brain which is causing the ventricles to swell. Today we spoke with the pediatric neurosurgeon and Ryleigh will have surgery tomorrow. The neurosurgeon, Dr Cherney, studied Ryleigh's CT scan and he said that it looks like there is some tissue that wasn't there before that is now covering the place where the fluid normally drains out of the brain. So the surgery tomorrow is to create a bi-pass for the spinal fluid. If everything goes well with the surgery she will not need a shunt.

Quick note

This is a dog that Ryleigh got from Becky Graham as a gift. The picture on the wall is one that was in Ryleigh's crib while she was in the NICU. A couple of weeks after Ryleigh had been home from the hospital I found the picture in with all her papers and so I hung it on her wall. As soon as she saw the picture she got a really big smile on her face! I told Becky this story and she sent this dog out not really knowing what the picture looked like. Isn't it crazy how similar the spots are?


We finally caught Ryleigh rolling over on camera! She hangs out on her side a lot but doesn't like to actually roll. In this past week she has cut two of her teeth! She has been so great during the whole thing you wouldn't even know they were coming in.

A message from Ryleigh

Hi everyone! This is Ryleigh, I just wanted to share some pictures from my busy week. On August 6th I went to a party for NICU graduates! Some of the kids there were in the NICU over 10 years ago!! While I was there I bumped into Javier, he was my neighbor in the NICU for a little while (and our parents used to go to the same ward). I also saw Dr Snyder, he's the one that resuscitated me, I wouldn't be here without him :) He was really surprised with my progress. This weekend I went swimming for the first time. It was a lot of fun but a little cold. welp, I'm gonna go play.

Sprouting like a weed

The first picture is of Ryleigh when she was 3 1/2 months old. The second picture is of Ryleigh now, 6 1/2 months old! (The chairs have different designs but are by the same company and are the same size.)

Ryleigh is on the move!

The first picture on the top is where I always put Ryleigh in her crib at night. The second picture is the foot of the crib where I found her last week. The third picture is where I found her at the head of the crib this morning! Keep in mind that Ryleigh doesn't crawl, rollover, or even scoot yet. She wiggles her body around enough in her sleep that she moves around the crib!!
The fourth picture is Ryleigh trying to block out the light, and yes, she is asleep. She has never been a fan of bright lights. The last picture is Ryleigh and me first thing this morning :)