About Me

Hi, I'm Rebecca. I am married to a wonderful man named Rhyan and together we have a beautiful baby boy named Kip. I hope to live my life in glory to God. This blog is a bit about that, a bit about my son, and a bit about my other love, books!

This is our story. Rhyan and I met at Barnes and Noble. I was shopping for a gift for my mother and decided to buy her the book Jesus Lives By: Sarah Young. Then, Rhyan came up to me and introduced himself and asked if I wanted to join him over in the coffee area to talk. I said ok. We kept on talking until close and then went over to a pizza place. We started dating soon after and the same year, October 22, 2011 we married.

A few short months later, I became pregnant!

It was a bit soon, but still very exciting news. We starting having our check-ups, but not far into my pregnancy we found out the news that our new baby boy would be born with a lung mass. He had what was called a bronchopulmonary sequestration. The tears came, but we had no other options but to start putting our trust more and more in God. We did not know if he would need to have a special procedure upon arrival so he was watched closely. September 11, 2012 I went in for one of his check-ups and they immediately admitted me for preeclampsia. They gave me a medicine called Mag, that made me so sick, I started vomiting. When they took me off Mag my blood pressure would sky rocket and I would get severe headaches to the point of screaming. The decided to transfer me by ambulance to another hospital that would be closer the Cincinnati Children's just in case we needed to have any special delivery. They decided to induce labor and our son finally came on September 17, 2012. He was 4 lbs. 1 oz There was a team there to take him. My husband said that initially he was not breathing, but the team waited on assistance to see if he would start breathing on his own, and he did! He was immediately admitted to the NICU, though, and was given a CPAP to help him breathe. I started pumping and my husband would deliver little syringes of life-giving colostrum to the NICU so that our new baby boy would have a good start.

He eventually had to have light-therapy for jaundice. He did get off the CPAP and was able to go onto a nasal cannula, and then room air. During this time, my husband had to return to work and my family did not want to leave me alone in Cincinnati so my mother and sister decided to drive me back and forth daily to see him and to deliver his fresh milk. Driving away from Cincinnati on the way back home and leaving my son behind was so hard and felt so wrong. I clung to the song "How Firm a Foundation" and listened to it over and over again. In the meantime we decided that we wanted to try and get him home, so the hospital agreed they would waive the transport services (a huge miracle) to get our son to UK hospital. Now I could go home at night and just go to Lexington to see my son. So much better. Once at UK several different things happened. He was at one point placed in an isolette (like an incubator box), we had to take him off of feedings for a few days because they were concerned he was going to develop a life-threatening illness called NEC because his bowels were not working well. The discovered that he had an enlarged heart and subaortic stenosis. Because of the lung masses there were extra blood vessels leading to them and they were stealing blood from his bowels and causing his heart to work too hard. They decided once he was clear of NEC, which he was eventually that needed to do a heart catheter and place coils to occlude at least one of the extra vessels and kill off one of the lung masses so that blood supply could be returned to the bowels and he could start feeding and regulating normally.

The procedure went well and after 1 and a half months of being in the NICU he came home!

He has since had another heart catheter with coil occlusion and it too has gone well. He will eventually have heart surgery to fix the subaortic stenosis, but his heart is now normal size and his appears to be a healthy 15 month old. We decided to name him Kip Leland. He is truly a miracle and I thank God for him and His mercy.

"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” 1 Sam. 1:27