10 years ago tomorrow.....

I simply cannot believe that 10 years ago tomorrow, my sweet little boy came into this world. I remember the day of JEB's birth, quite well.

It was my last, official day of school for the year 2000. It was sort of bittersweet, as the school I was teaching at had decided they must close. Not enough kids to keep it running. Very sad. It was a nice little school. LOVED my classroom....each one had a sink, toilet, water fountain and a whole wall of windows!!! It really was a sweet little school, just had been mismanaged for a couple of years and it went downhill FAST!!!

Anyhow, went to school to finish getting my things all out of my room and to say goodbye to everyone. I had a dr. appt that afternoon and everyone was making sure I would call them when he came into the world.

Well, I was feeling pretty good, just hot. It was south Florida, after all. Went to the dr. and she said my blood pressure was not where she wanted it and we sort of had talked about going ahead and inducing me anyways, so I was to ck into the hospital around 9pm. Ok, I said.....can I eat dinner??? Yes, a small one. Nothing too heavy, the dr. says. Ok......so I have a bacon sandwich and a bowl of Cheerios. Not heavy.....I mean, it wasn't a STEAK!

We got to the hospital and all ckd in, went to the room. HOLD IT....back up. While at the dr.'s office I said to her, "So, when do you think I'll have this baby? By noon???" She laughed, quite a lot actually, and said, "Honey, you'll be doing good to have this baby by tomorrow night!" I told her, just you wait and see. He'll come FAST!!! Now, as they were hooking me up to the monitors and such, his little heart rate decided to dip quite low, several times and the nurse didn't like that too much and decided to call Dr. Green. The nurse comes back and says, "Guess what??? YOU are going to have this baby.......as soon as she gets here. Like tonight!! Like we need to get you prepped for a C-section!"

Now, in all reality, this is what we wanted. Jn is NOT a blood/guts/yucky sort of person, so I had a dear friend there with me to do the labor/delivery stuff. Marsha helped Jn get a duded up in his hospital gear and boy, did he look funny!!!

Then in comes Dr. Green......my only comment to her was...."See, I told you I would have this baby by noon!!!" HA! She laughed and laughed!

So off to the operating room I went.....got my nice spinal!!! Woo-hoo....those are good drugs!!! Jn came into the room and they started with the c-section.

It was going well, until that nice little, mild dinner I had eaten decided that it really didn't want to stay in my stomach.........especially with all of that pushing and rearranging they were doing. I had MUCHO scar tissue from having my appendix removed in college and she had to get thru all of that to get to the baby. ANYWAY, JEB was born at 11:55 pm on the 12th of June, 2000. He cried a little bit, but he had meconium in his fluid and they really didn't want him to cry much.

I remember asking what does he look like and the neonatologist told Jn that he thought there was a possibility of Down Syndrome. I, of course, was out to lunch as they finished up the surgery.

I don't really remember much until they came for him in the early morning for his pediatrician ck. and the neonatologist came and told me that they were going to keep him in NICU cause he hadn't nursed yet and his blood sugar was low and they wanted to feed him. His breathing was also a little labored and they wanted to ck him out and make sure everything was ok before bringing him back to me. I cried and cried......I wanted to nurse him so bad, but he wasnt too interested at the time. I sort of remember him saying something about Down Syndrome, but Jn had gone home to sleep and I couldn't really remember.

When he finally came back, my ob/gyn came in to talk with us and she told us what she thought the diagnosis would be. She felt so sad for us, as we had elected to have my tubes tied and I remember telling her that it was ok. GOD had a plan for this sweet little boy and that HE had blessed us with being the parents to carry that plan out.

He stayed in NICU for 13 days, and while his bloodwork showed he has an extra chromosome, he is perfectly healthy in every way! We are so blessed to be his parents!!! I can't wait to see what GOD has in store for him!!!

We love you buddy!!!