A much needed update about Rob's kidney and our new baby girl

We had our baby girl! Her name is Eliza Jane Newton and she is beautiful, healthy and did I mention - she's totally gorgeous? She is 2 weeks old today, which has been the fastest fortnight of my life. I can't stop staring at her, especially when she is busy staring at me and listening to my voice. Her eyes are so big, beautiful and full of wonder. She likes it when I sing to her while her bottle is warming up. She also likes to ride in my EcoSash wrap & tie while I do general household chores or we're out and about shopping. Rob is extremely happy to be a Daddy finally, as he has wanted the blessing of a child for as long as I have (many years!)

I will write more about labor/delivery and the first 2 weeks of her life in another blog post. But here is a cutie-patootie picture of her (taken March 19). I now give you permission to say "awwwww"! :)



Now, on to Rob's kidney update:

A while back I wrote about Rob's BK virus and how the docs took him off one of his anti-rejection drugs (CellCept) to fight the virus. Well, it worked - there's only 293 replications of the virus present in his blood currently! There were 30,000 replications of it back in January, so this is great news!

His creatinine level had been 1.8 for the longest time...but then about 2 weeks ago, it went up to 1.9, which isn't good, but it's not anything to worry over. Then, 1 week ago, Rob had labs drawn and his transplant coordinator called him to tell him some bad news - his creatinine had gone up to 2.3, which definitely frightened us and his doctors, too. They recommended that Rob drink lots of water for a couple of days and then come in and get his labs checked again. So he did...and guess what? His creatinine went down to 1.5 - wow!!! That's as low as it's been since the transplant! So Rob learned an important lesson about staying hydrated post-transplant: water does a kidney good! It's hard for many transplant patients to stay hydrated after having been on dialysis for a long while, because dialysis was the only way for Rob to process fluids - so everything he drank, he kept on his body until dialysis treatment time. So he had "water/fluid is bad, don't drink too much of it" running continuously through his mind. But now that his new kidney is working well, he has to retrain his mind to think the exact opposite! Water is good for you and you should drink as much as possible!

So Rob will be carrying his Nalgene bottle, filled with delicious water, wherever he goes in the future!



We have so much to be thankful for in our lives right now! There's lots more I could write about right now, but I've got a sleeping infant on my chest right now and I really just want to go lay down on the couch and watch the news with her!