Happy Birthday, Evan!

This weekend was a whirlwind of birthday festivities,
as we celebrated Evan’s 8th birthday!

 

He invited his 6 second-grade classmates over,
and they had a LOT of fun! : )

 

 

Since Leah’s birthday is the day before Evan’s, we skyped our Colorado cousins while opening presents from Grandpa & Grandma VE.

 

His baseball birthday cake was a hit! : )

~

Evan’s birthday always brings back a flood of memories…

I’ll never forget lying on the ultrasound table at 34 weeks pregnant, seeing the black hole that should have been his tiny bladder, and finding out that something was terribly wrong with his kidneys.

He was diagnosed with posterior urethral valve disorder, which meant the outlet from his bladder was blocked. The amniotic fluid that should have been around his body was building up inside him instead. He was breech and there was not enough fluid for him to turn, so he was born a week later by C-section, exactly one month before his due date.

I’ll never forget lying on the table in the OR being prepped for the C-section, or being wheeled into the NICU to see him struggling to breathe for a few brief seconds.
That was all I saw of him for the first 24 hours.

He spent the next 10 days at the University of IL hospital. I’ll never forget the car ride home without him, or the ambulance ride through Chicago city traffic to the hospital where he would have his first surgery.

When he was 13 days old the valve was removed, and we went home the next day. We made many trips back for doctor’s appointments, and he was always on 3-4 medications. He never spit up, which was a blessing, because we always knew he got
the medicine he needed.

Evan’s kidneys had developed under a tremendous amount of pressure, and as a result one of them never functioned at all. When he was 13 months old, we decided to have that kidney removed at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, in order to avoid possible infection. I’ll never forget the doctor telling us he would bounce back in a day or two… and after 3-4 days he was still in so much pain we couldn’t hold him and he still wouldn’t eat at all.

Evan recovered fully after that surgery. He no longer needed to be on antibiotics, and his remaining kidney grew and compensated for the one that was gone.
Today he doesn’t take any medicine, and you’d never know he was missing a kidney except for the scar on his right side.

All these memories always bring me back to the same conclusion…
God is good.
In all of this, He graciously provided for all of our needs,
and blessed us with an abundance of support from our family & friends.
We have so much to be thankful for.

Happy Birthday, Evan James!
We love you so much!