Jeremy Liam Jones: The light goes on...

6/14/07

The light goes on...

Since having Jeremy, we notice that there are sudden changes that happen with him. It is like he grows overnight for example. One day he is one size and by the next morning he has grown....
It is the same with his development. Kendal and I both swear that sometimes he gos to bed one night and wakes up the next morning having figured something out, and is a different guy then when he went to bed.....
Yesterday, when he woke up, it was as though he had learned how to grab everything in sight and wanted to touch everything. I brought him to the Health Unit for his shots, and he was ripping up and crinkling the paper he was laying on, and then he was grabbing for the measuring tape, and then all the toys on the counter....
Not that he couldn't pick things up the day before....but something was just different....
and then he gave me a for real hug...reached for Kendal when Kendal asked if he wanted to come to him....and was relating differently to Mercy Buckets when I was visiting Brenda....
I am so glad I can stay home with him and see all these new firsts....

By the way, the boy is now 14 lbs 2 oz...but he is still 10th percentile in growth....

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Jealousy

Then we went back to my home town for a visit, and one of our very close friends, Jeremy Nelson had just had his first son, Judah. Jeremy was so proud. When we got home I couldn't stop thinking about how happy Jeremy and Donna were with their baby. I was kind of jealous. Then after a while one of my other close friends, Scott called to say that his wife Lawna was pregnant as well. Back home in Regina, friends were also getting pregnant at an alarming rate, and even enjoying it. Jason and Brenda's little girl Mercedes(Mercy) won our hearts as well.

Loss

Also we started losing friends. Jeremy called me to inform me he had leukemia(to read his story click here). We lost our friend Josh, who I had known since I was 12, and we lost several other friends from Williams Lake. Losing people like that does strange things to your attitudes about mortality, family, friends, etc... We realized that life is sometimes short, and family and friends are very important. Robyn and I started talking about it and agreed that if we ever were to have another child it wouldn't be that bad.

Suprise!

This is where the story gets funny. Our oldest girl, Krystal lives on her own, but her sisters Brandy and Bree are still at home. They knew we were trying to get pregnant, but we decided to surprise Krystal. We hadn't seen Krystal for a while. We noticed she had been calling a lot, but not coming around. So when we called her to get together and go for coffee and she started crying on the phone.. Guess who got the surprise? We were going to be grandparents before we were parents. Krystal was due in October.

Pregnancy

We enjoyed the pregnancy, well actually, I enjoyed the pregnancy, Robyn survived it. It was not the most comfortable pregnancy. For one thing, she got really big, really fast. Our friend Tammy got pregnant shortly after Robyn and she didn't start to show until December. It was all I could do to keep Robyn from beating her up. It did seem to help that I gained a bunch of sympathy weight for most of the pregnancy (it's all gone now). The morning-sickness phase wasn't too bad, but she had very bad acid reflux through most of the pregnancy. She also had a lot of cramping throughout the whole thing. At our first ultrasound they measured the baby and said our due date was February 7. At our 20 week ultrasound, we found out that he was a boy. This put the name debate to rest we hadn't really settled on a girl name, but we had told Jeremy we were trying to conceive and that we would name the baby Jeremy, if it was a boy.

More pregnancy

At 28 weeks, we tried to go to the Grey Cup party at our church. Halfway through the game, Robyn told me we had to head to the hospital. She had started bleeding. This was the start of a hospital stay of several days. She was going through premature labor. They managed to stabilize her, but they were concerned that she was going to have the baby early. After this Robyn had to take it easy. She ended up quitting work a month earlier than planned. She also had to go in for a shot of steroids to speed up the babies lung development. At this point they told us that although it was still early the baby would be safe to come at any time now.

The Flood

On Sunday, January 7, Talon, Robyn and I skipped the evening service at church to hang out with Jason and Brenda. We hadn't done anything with them for a while, and Brenda wanted to make us tandoori chicken. It turns out Brenda's chicken is so spicy it will induce labor! After dinner Jason and I tried to conquer the galaxy for a while while the girls were talking. Robyn had been feeling weird all day. Around 9:30 we headed home. As we walked in the door, Robyn very calmly said, "Oh that's not very good, you'll have to give Talon his bath tonight." I said, "Ok, why?" She replied, "because I think my water just broke." The calm dissolved in mere seconds into panic and disorder. Even though we were at 36 weeks, and even though we had known for some time that the baby was probably coming early we were NOT ready. Robyn insisted that I bath Talon while she was getting ready to go. She had none of her overnight stuff packed up yet, so Brandy and Bree were enlisted to run around while Robyn yelled orders. I gave Talon the world's quickest baby bath; the poor kid barely got wet. In fairly short order we through everything we could think of into the car and drove off...

What are the odds?

While driving to the hospital I realized that I should call my parents, but they were both working at the Sears call center. The call center has an internal phone number to reach employees, but they were not answering, which only left the 1-800#. Now you have to understand, when you call the Sears 1-800# you have 3 seperate call centers taking those calls. You might get Belleville(ON), Montreal or Regina. Even if you were to get the right call center, there are usually 40 or 50 people working at a time. There are probably only a dozen people in the center who would even know who Mom and Dad are or where they sit. In other words the odds of getting someone helpful were slim, but I took a chance, hoping to at least get a message to them... Ring.... Ring.... Ring.... "Sears, Harold, How can I help you?" Me: "Dad?" Dad: "Kendal?..." Me: "Dad, Robyn's water just broke!" I guess I should have bought a lottery ticket that day. To make along story short; Mom and Dad sit in cubicles right next to each other, so Mom promptly hung up on her customer and stole my Dad's phone. I told her what was happening, but said that they should finish their shift before rushing off to the hospital. When we were done talking we arrived at the hospital.

The Hospital

Once we arrived at the hospital, they sent us to the Labor and Birth Unit. By now we were quite worried because the baby was a month early. We were also quite concerned that although the water broke, Robyn was experiencing no labor symptoms. Once we arrived in L & B Unit, they immediately began checking the condition of the baby. When they put on the heart monitor, we could hear his healthy heartbeat and we began to relax a little. At this point, we both thought that the baby had to be delivered within the next couple hours, but it turns out they can stay in for a very long time after the membrane is ruptured(water broke). They still receive all the oxygen and nutrition they need. The main concern then is that mom and baby are at a higher risk of infection. We sat in our room for a long time before finally seeing a doctor. The doctor brought us bad news: because we were at 36 weeks we should have been in NICU, but NICU in Regina was totally packed(mostly with patients from Saskatoon because they were full too), any Regina NICU patients were being flown to Vancouver, Edmonton or Calgary. The doctor told us that we might be able to stay in Regina, but the Head Doctor from NICU would have to decide. When he left to confer with the NICU Doc, we prayed. We did not want Robyn to have to fly anywhere, mostly because I would not be able to go. We were very relieved when the doctor came back and told us Robyn could stay. They said she was close enough to 37 weeks and the baby was big enough that we would probably be OK to have the baby in Regina. Thank God! I also thought it was cool that my son and grandson were born in the same hospital as me!

Don't be cruel

After a few hours, it became clear that the hospital staff was in no hurry to get the baby out. Robyn was on an antibiotic IV drip to ward off infections. The plan was to wait to see if Robyn would go into labor on her own, but if she didn't, they were going to induce labor. Hospital policy says that they won't induce until they have a doctor and staff available to handle the delivery. They figured that would probably be the next day. By now we'd been sitting around waiting for a few hours, and the panic began to give way to boredom. This gave me time to think. It was after midnite, which put us into Jan 8. I was so thrilled when I realized that my son was going to be born on Elvis' birthday. I couldn't have picked a better birthday for him. 24 hours later, when Elvis' birthday came and went with no labor or induction, I told Robyn, that the baby was going to be grounded for his first week.

Baby Time!

Our OB/GYN (well not mine, but Robyn's) was Dr Amos Akinbiyi. He was recommended to us by my cousin Mike and his wife Joni. When they had their son Josh, their experience with Dr Akinbiyi was very good. He is a Christian man who will joyfully worship and pray you through your labor if you are open to that. We had been praying through the whole pregnancy that he would be the on call Doc when we had the baby. When we came in on January 8, we thought we were too early because Akinbiyi wasn't on until Wednesday. Of course we didn't know we would be sitting around the hospital for the next two days. On Wednesday, they finally had the staff to start inducing Robyn. Other than having a bad reaction to the the induction drugs(Robyn had a half hour long contraction...Ouch), the labor went fairly well. It lasted about five and a half hours. At one point, when the pain was most intense, Dr Akinbiyi said to Robyn, "I must ask one favor of you; when the baby is born, you have to name him Amos(his name)." I laughed, but Robyn was not in her right mind at that point. For just a moment she thought it was a word from God. She quickly realized that was Akinbiyi's name, and said, "No we're naming him after our friend Jeremy." Then she quickly descended into blubbering, "I miss Jeremy..." Once we got her re-focused on having the baby, things went fairly quickly. At 9:23pm, Robyn gave birth to our son, Jeremy Liam Jones. The Baby was born 6lbs even. Welcome to the family Jeremy! Click the play button on the video below to see his first few minutes!