Update

a quick update.

nic is spending the night with summer and Kathy is back at home. Her parents are staying. Summer is responding much more like the one we know which is good news. All prayers still very welcome. it looks like we will be in hospital about 5 days.

We will update when we can.

Summers back in Hospital

Summer health has deteriorated and she has been admitted back into Leicester royal infirmary. She became very lethargic and while I initially thought it was just Daddy paranoia we decided to act and take her to A and E. She has been put on antibiotics for a minimum of 48 hours while further tests are done for meningitis. She has stabilised after being given some fluids and initial antibiotics and has recovered some of her spark! This may or may not be related to the weight loss.

Please pray for Summers health and that she does not have any infections. And also for us as a family to get through the next few days.

Also please spread the word about this change to get as many as possible praying for Summer.

Specific Prayer Request

We had a visit from the health visitor today and when she measured Summer her weight had dropped from the last measurement about 4 days ago. Obviously this is not good so the health visitor is coming back tomorrow to see if she has grown in the last 24hrs before taking any further action.

This is worrying for us both so please pray again that she will grow and quickly. This has worked before when we prayed for rapid weight gain and certainly can again.

Thank you.

We are Home!!!

Its hard to believe but all three of us are now sitting in our living room at home!! We were originally told Summer would need another week recovery but she has done so well they packed us off early!!

Of course we have lots of follow up appointment's, orthopedics for her hips which are dislocated due to the breach position, urology and neurology for the spina bifida issues as well as the mid wife, health visitor and pediatricians. I won't hand in the hospital parking season ticket just yet!

So tonight is our first night with our beautiful daughter altogether at home. I doubt we will sleep and I am sure we are going to be exhausted for the next 16 years....we cant wait!!

Things I have.

I have the most beautiful daughter in the world.

A husband who has been my rock and is already a fantastic dad.

An amazing God

Fantastic Friends and family

Ankles the size of an elephants!

Visitors are welcome....just call first!!

She’s in a bit of a routine now, cry, eat, sleep, cry, eat, sleep ... a routine many of you are aware of I’m sure.

We are of course anxious parents. Either she is crying too much or too little, sleeping too much or too little. She has a fine line to walk to keep us away from the many nurses there are around all trying to reassure us that she is fine.

We are really privileged to have so many professionals around us during this first couple of weeks. All those little questions and worries are answered long before any major panic begins to set in!! We have also had a couple of male midwives answering questions on an issue I would before have thought it impossible for a man to know so much about!!

We would love to have some visitors so if you would like to visit little Summer and parents please just give me a call on my mobile phone; 0772 7753603. Of course if it is not a good time for us we will let you know so please don’t be offended. I have to look after the family first of all!

Finally it is easy to see by looking at all the other children on the ward just how lucky we are with Summer. There are so many sad stories of pain and suffering around us that have made us realise just how much of a blessed family we are.

Summer at 3 days old

Nic and Kathy asked us to post this photo for them. She's really beautiful. Sue and Mike.

Truly Amazing

Little Summer went in for surgery at about 9am this morning. It was one of the hardest things I have done watching her being taken away for the operation. I was so upset.

At 12.30 we were reunited with our baby. The operation went to plan, her back now has everything in its place and she was wide awake and feeding in the next 20 minutes!! Just how quickly she recovered from such an operation is truly amazing. The goal now is to keep her scar clean and to let it heal. This may take a couple of weeks.

Kathy is still recovering from the section but doing realy well. Of course she is loving every minute with her new daughter. We had a realy great nurse with us last night. She was such a help to us both and esepecially Kathy in reassuring and advising us of so many baby related things. She does not usually work our ward but was last night thankfuly. She was our own angel looking after us all through the night.

Last night before the operation I wanted to spend as much time as possible with our new baby so I spent the night holding her in the cot just the two of us. It was such a good time of bonding for us both. Not sleeping was a small price to pay but I must sleep now. here are some more photos.

Surgery Tomorrow Morning

Surgery starts at 7am tomorrow morning. Our briefing with the registrar went well but it was so sad to hear again of all her problems and difficulties. I then went back to Summer and while looking at her it all went away, we love her so much none of it matters compared to just having her in our life. She is so beautiful, just like my lovely wife.

Please pray for us all tomorrow morning, Summer especially.

Off to Nottingham

As I write Summer is in an ambulance on her way to Nottingham and Kathy is in the bath having a well deserved break. Soon I’ll be picking her up as we make our way up to Nottingham for a few days. Summer had a good night and she was moved into the lowest care nursery which is a good sign. They are going to do an MRI scan when she arrives then operate on her back maybe this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Luckily there is a bed there for both Kathy and Summer. I’m staying at my Best Mans house only a couple of miles from the hospital, very convenient!!

There have been so many kind comments and emails, thank you for each of them.

A Message from Baby Summer

Just a little message from our new baby. Isn't she just adorable!!!!

Welcome 'Summer Grace Allen'

Welcoming 'Summer Grace Allen' to the world!!


She was born today 16th May 2007 at 10.36 at Leicester Royal Infirmary weighing is a perfect 5lb and 8 oz. The exact weight for 36 weeks and rather amazing as we did the caesarean because she wasn’t growing!!


Summer has already been moved off the intensive care ward as shes breathing well and is stable. She has beautiful blonde hair. Kathy is walking around despite my protests.


I have left her for he first night with Summer to get better acquainted. I'm exhausted.

almost....

Arrived at the hospital at 8am to find there is no bed available for the little one so the caesarean has been postponed. No photo to upload as promised I’m afraid.

Our consultant decided to rescan us to give her a better idea of just how hard she needed to fight to get us a bed and we had some very surprising results; they showed the baby was growing again which was great news. A real answer to prayer.

That said the consultant doesn’t want to change plans based on this one scan so we are still having a section when they can fit us in but we will not be an emergency. To help get us a slot they have admitted Kathy to a ward to keep pressure on the neonatal managers and we should be having it tomorrow. As it is left tonight there is a little baby boy who may need a pipe inserted to help him breath which will mean he will have the next available bed but after that it is for us assuming no more emergencies come in. They had 4 last night, the reason for our delay.

So I will say it again, this time tomorrow we will be uploading a photo of the baby. Unfortunately this will not be taken with the intended camera as when I got it out at the hospital to take a pre-caesarean photo I found the lens all smashed up. After a mild panic, appreciation of just how minor an issue this was and a brief shopping trip the camera is replaced an I’m snapping happy again but now with a few extra megapixles!! Just hope this one doesn’t break as buying 2 in 2 days would be too much to cope with!!

Our God son might get his wish to have her born on his 7th birthday tomorrow. Apparently that makes them twins??!!

Indian take away and an early night

We both woke up today so happy. This is our last day before baby comes. How lucky we are to have everything so organized and arranged for us. As you can see the magazine article has brought people to us and led them to make such kind remarks. Thank you to every one or your kind words again. We chose early on not to reply to specific comments for fear that it would become a burden on us but please know they are all read by us both and all appreciated.

Last night around 20 friends from our church gathered in one of the church rooms to pray for us. We had some worship time and then they laid hands on us and prayed. I was so good to have friends and a church around that support us so much. He repeated his words on the cross to me while we were praying “It is done”. I can’t wait till tomorrow to find out what this may mean for us right now.

It’s an Indian take away tonight, not too spicy for Kathy of course, and then an early night, we have to be in the hospital by 7.30am. What a thought to know that tomorrow night I will be uploading a photo of the little one onto this very blog!! Amazing Grace is what it is.

Answers to prayer.

This afternoon we had to go for another scan, as the amniotic fluid was very low on Tuesday and our consultant was quite concerned. We are booked in for a planned c-section on Tuesday, but this scan was to check we did not need to move it sooner.
Yesterday Nic had a strong feeling that we should be praying bigger prayers for healing this baby. We sent an email to a few people and this afternoon before we went for the scan some friends came around and prayed with us.

We went off to the appointment ( bags packed!) and saw our consultant who had arranged especially to see us and had the scan. The Amniotic fluid measurements were back up to normal which was fantastic. Our doctor was quite surprised, but obviously very pleased. It means that we will go ahead on Tuesday morning with the birth. The whole scan situation today was so different from normal (I am not normally the biggest fan of scan days!) Our doctor was very relaxed and spent ages trying to get a nice picture of her face for us. She actually got so carried away looking, we had to tell her to stop!

Our doctors passion for her job was really evident today, she seems to take a pleasure in looking at our baby as a whole, not just her problems.
She will not be doing the operation, but has said she is around if we need her.

So we have a few more days of peace, time to finish the DIY ( Nic) and put our feet up ( Kathy) before we meet her.

All very scary, and very soon!!

On Saturday Kathy noticed the little one wasn’t moving quite as normally as she was, only under considerable prodding and poking so we went into the LRI to have them both checked out. All was OK although today when our consultant heard about it she wanted us to go in for an additional scan. This scan has shown that there has been significant reduction in the amount of amniotic fluid surrounding the baby, apparently a sign that the baby is not well and not growing as she should. So the consultant has decided to bring forward the caesarean to next Tuesday at the LRI (not Nottingham due to ease of making arrangements) and to give us an additional scan on Friday where they will just make sure she is still OK. Kathy is to pay close attention to baby’s movements and at the first sign of any changes we will go in to the hospital but hopefully she will make it to Tuesday!!

Suddenly it is all very soon and very scary. It is also strangely a relief that finally something is going to happen but of course we would rather not this way. Kathy is just starting her first week off work so she will miss out on those few weeks relaxing at home unfortunately. I have decided to take a couple of day’s holiday before the birth so I am now at home for probably about a month which is certainly not a bad thing!! My work have been great with all the time of I have needed

So, just what to pray for? Firstly that over the next week the baby will not be under any distress, that the Caesarean will go OK, it is a major operation for Kathy, that we will make it to Tuesday and the Friday scan will be OK for the weekend.

Also something which seems a little strange in the circumstances but its about my knee. I tried it out last week and its now back to square one; walking ok but any twisting is very painful and after sitting down standing up can be excruciating. I really don’t want this to be an issue over the next few weeks. I have physio and orthopaedics referrals coming up.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has been thinking and praying for us recently. It has made such a difference and although baby’s not been cured so far we have certainly enjoyed this pregnancy, scans and all and that’s a great answer to prayer. We are entering a new phase with this baby and again all we can do is to trust in just how loved we are by a wonderful and powerful father God.

I have finished work!

I am officially a lady of leisure, I finished work last Thursday to a great send off. I would like to say I am missing work already, but actually I am making the most of my time off before she arrives!


A friend of mine reminded me of this old song and I have been meaning to post it for ages.

Father I place into your hands the things I cannot do
Father I place into your hands the times that I’ve been through
Father I place into your hands the way that I should go,
For I know I always can trust you.

Father I place into your hands my friends & family
Father I place into your hands the things that trouble me,
Father I place into your hands the person I would be,
For I know I always can trust you.

Father I want to be with you & do the things you do,
Father I want to speak the words that you are speaking to,
Father I want to love the ones that you will draw to you
For I know that I am one with you

J. Hewer 1975

Simple, but truthful words.