Brayden Smith

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. We want to tell you about our journey so far with the birth of Brayden Scott. It has all happened soo fast we haven't been able to give details so we'll start from Friday, Sept. 30. We were made aware of a situation with a Marshallese birth mom that was needing an AR family for her baby to be born on Nov. 30th. So we wanted to think about it and pray about it before we make any decision. We contacted Vaughn Cordes, the lawyer, on Friday but didn't get to talk to him til Sat night and got the details on the situation. Monday we worked on financing and in the evening we text Vaughn to say we would be able to go ahead with this adoption. It was only a couple minutes after we text that he asked to call us. Vaughn said in between the last couple of texts his interpreter  called and said he was taking the bmom to the hospital and she was very likely going to have this baby tonight. This was about 7:30 Monday evening. Vaughn said he would let us know any updates but he just wanted to give us a heads up since it was very unexpected for everyone. At 11:20 we finally got an update that they were doing a c-section. It was 12:30am on Tues. when they said the baby was here!! Vaughn said we didn't need to be at the hospital till 10 or 11 on Tues. morning since bmom would need rest time. Beings we knew sleep was out of the question we decided to get packed up asap and go to Springdale and get a motel. So at 12:45 before we left I raced around  the country collecting baby boy gear since i felt frantic with not a single blue thing on hand, just pink! We got packed up and left by 1:45. When it started to resemble morning we started calling the family. Only a very few had any idea a baby was in the picture so we had a lot of calling and texting to do!! Got to motel at 6 and go a little sleep. Went to the hospital finally at 10am and we waited for the interpreter while sitting in the car for nearly 2 hours. Decided to go get lunch all the while he was waiting at the lobby entrance and wondering where we were! Went in to see the birth parents. The bmom was not doing well. It looked like she was on the brink of death. They could speak broken English so we could communicate somewhat. The birthparents hadn't seen the baby at all. Baby was of course in NICU since he was 8 weeks premature. He weighed 3# and 7oz, was 17 1/4 inches and he was born at 9:50pm on Oct. 3. Finally at 3pm Linda got to go see Brayden along with the bfather. We scrub in for 3 min before we enter the inner core NICU where the critical babies are. We were both emotional and then I noticed the bfather had his hands over Brayden's incubator and his eyes closed, praying. The baby is on a 4 hour care schedule and that's when they take his mask off so I could really see him. That's also the only time we may touch him. At 4pm was his care time so I was there and got a little bit more info since we didn't really know his condition. That's when I asked his weight never expecting him to be so small. He's on donor breast milk since a baby can't tolerate formula until 34 weeks. They were giving him 2ml of milk every 4 hours through his feeding tube. They had him under the light for his jaundice. They did let me know he's doing really good! His lungs are good so no oxygen, just air flow. He does suck a pacifier really well which means the sucking reflex  is good. At 8 I went back up for his care time and to tell him good-night. We went back to the motel then and crashed!! 
Wed. Oct. 5-Last evening Kelly's folks headed this way. They got here at around 8am to our motel to take care of Sabrina. It was so good to see them! We needed to go to Vaughn's office to do some paperwork at 9. At 10:30 we went back to the motel to get folks and Sabrina. At 11:30 got to the hospital. Went to see bmom and she was doing much better! She gave everyone a scare the day before. Kelly got his first chance to see his baby boy.The nurse told us his jaundice was worse but they were able to up his feeding to 3ml.  Grandpa and Grandma got to see him also. While he's in the inner core NICU only parents and grandparents are allowed to visit. The outer core will give more flexibility for visitors. Sabrina won't be able to see her little brother for a bit yet. At the 4pm care time I was there and got to talk to the Dr. I asked what we are looking at for a time schedule. He said oh he will be here at least a month! At this point we don't know how long he will be in inner core. Kelly and I got to both go to the 8pm care and stayed awhile then we all headed to the motel. A word about Sabrina-She is having a hard time with this all. She always wonders where mommy is since I don't get much time in with her. She also cries to go home to Brina's house, especially as she gets sleepy. 
Thank you all for the prayers so far. We have felt them strongly.