Sanford News, Moriah Edition We are so excited to introduce to you our precious, beautiful, healthy, cute, fun, tiny daughter. She was born on February 25th at 3:19 PM, weighing 4 lbs 13 oz and measuring 18 inches long. She came almost 4 weeks early but has adjusted to the outside world extremely well–for which we are very grateful! Needless to say, she’s the cutest thing that has ever happened to us. Bonus reading included at the bottom if you’re interested in hearing the details of Moriah’s birth. Otherwise just enjoy the adorable pictures! 🙂 |
What’s in the name? Moriah comes from the name of our sweet friends’ baby daughter who went to be with the Lord in October of 2017. She left such an impact on us and on this world as God used her life and death in powerful ways. Her parents were such a testimony through that whole event by their faith and trust in the Lord no matter what happened. So, in our desire to lovingly honor this family and carry on that legacy of trusting the Lord in all circumstances, we named our daughter after Moriah Joy Romero with her parents’ blessing. Rebecca is in honor of Allegra’s mother. She has certainly earned it by raising 4 children in the way they should go and none of them have departed from it (Proverbs 22:6). She is an all time great mom and we love her. |
Look for another update soon with news of the rest of what’s happening in our lives these days! |
Bonus Reading Moriah’s Birth… To begin with, we figured we had around 4 weeks left before the arrival of our daughter, so were still working on various preparations. Because of that, when contractions began on Sunday evening we figured they were just a false alarm and would subside. Allegra even sent me to bed thinking that it would stop, but then proceeded to go through the whole night with contractions no more than 10 minutes apart. Of course, she didn’t sleep except for some rare minutes in between contractions which left her exhausted right from the start. Around 8 AM the contractions were a pretty consistent 5 minutes apart, so we went ahead and called the hospital. They thought that it was a false alarm as well—maybe caused by dehydration—but wanted to check it out. We threw some things together and headed into town. As we settled into our room at the hospital, we still hoped we would be going home soon, but the contractions remained very consistent and the IV fluids didn’t slow them down. The nurses started mentioning that Allegra’s blood pressure was quite high and that they wanted to see some other test results. We didn’t know what that might mean but it didn’t sound great. A few minutes later, our nurse informed us that we would be having the baby that day and that the doctor would be in to talk to us shortly. It was a bit eerie as we knew there was something she wasn’t saying. The doctor/midwife then came in and told us that Allegra had preeclampsia quite badly. Also, the baby’s heart rate was dropping with each contraction which signaled something was wrong with the umbilical cord. As a result, she said we would have to do a C-section to make sure that the baby was okay and to try to avoid any dangers to Allegra caused by the preeclampsia. A few hours later, after some delay, we had our sweet daughter Moriah. They had warned us that she may come out with some issues due to being premature, but she was as healthy as can be from the first second of her life outside the womb! Tyler got to watch her come out and also cut the cord, then Moriah was placed on Allegra’s chest—which was sweet except that Allegra was in pain and had her arms strapped so couldn’t actually hold her. The next 24 hours were extremely difficult as Allegra had to be on a magnesium IV around the clock to help avoid the risk of a seizure. The magnesium made her feel pretty lousy and left her with almost no strength to do anything other than sip water and respond to questions. It was a hard way to spend her first day with her daughter. Thankfully, after the 24 hours they took her off the IV and moved us to the recovery wing where she quickly got to feeling more herself. The biggest challenge was trying to feed Moriah who was too small to latch well. This meant that most of our hours were dedicated to getting her belly filled which didn’t leave much time for sleeping. Each day brought so much improvement though, and we were able to go home after 3 nights in the hospital! Things are going much better now as we have received an abundance of help from friends and family and as we have adjusted to Moriah. She does have some acid reflux, but thankfully the medicine that her pediatrician prescribed seems to be helping. We are so thankful for each of you who have sent us letters, gifts, meals, and encouragement. We feel well taken care of and very loved! |