Olivia Marie Ownby (is back in the hospital)

Yes, you heard right. Her name is Olivia Marie Ownby and she is back in the hospital after being home for only a few days.

Basically, my little baby got RSV which is a respiratory virus that is common among little kids but can be very hard on newborns (especially premature newborns such as my daughter). Heather, noticed that our daughter was having a really hard time breathing so we took her to an insta-care and the doctor took one look at her and called an ambulance. The ambulance took her and my wife to a children's hospital (which is right next to hospital where she was born, ironically enough). I took my 2 year old son to a neighbor's house for the night and then traveled to the hospital. There were tons of sick kids in the children's emergency room but because Olivia traveled via ambulance she got right in ahead of the rest of them (it probably had to do with the fact that she was so at risk too). I stayed there with Heather until about 2:45 AM and finally traveled home. I got to sleep about 3:45 AM, so I was dead tired.

The next morning I woke up at 9, still feeling very tired, and went over to the neighbor's house to retrieve my son. I then returned home with him, put him in his bed and climbed into bed myself to get more sleep. Well I had not fallen asleep yet when Heather called and said that Olivia was not eating enough and that she (Heather) needed a breast pump in order to keep her milk supply up. (for those men who don't have kids, this may sound really foreign... basically when a mother is breast feeding, if she stops feeding for any length of time, her body will assume the baby isn't breast feeding anymore and will stop producing milk. This is NOT what we want because baby formula is very expensive).

So if you can imagine this.. I am lying there, dead tired. My son is in the next room, dead tired. And my wife is telling me that she urgently needs to pump. And she is 45 minutes away at the hospital.

I was feeling so overwhelmed and helpless. I felt like I couldn't do everything that needed to be done by myself, and I was really starting to feel kind of depressed and desperate. So I decided to pray. My prayer was short and in it I basically said "God, I don't know what to do. I need help. I can't do this all by myself anymore." And then my prayer was over. Now here is the amazing part. About 30 seconds later, the phone rings, and I think it is my wife calling with my bad news. So I answer the phone kind of dejected and sad. And it turns out to be another neighbor who heard that my wife and baby were in the hospital. And she said "Do you need any help?" and I said "Yes, I need all kinds of help!" I then arranged for her to take my son for the day, which was a HUGE burden lifted off of me. (I stayed home from work). Now I know that the fact that she called 30 seconds after I prayed was not a coincidence and I know that my prayer was answered. It was really amazing. We really don't have to go through life alone.

In short, I think that my daughter will be okay and that our family will get through this. My neighbors have been so good to me, it really touches me. I want to be sure to repay the favor to them some day for the good they've done to me.