{*15*}

Woo Hoo!
My "7" baby has made it to 15!
We call him our "7" because he was born on 2-5-1997, 7lbs 7oz, at 14:14 military time.

 We went out for a birthday dinner tonight at KFC and will have a BBQ with his favorite food tomorrow - RIBS!

My son's birth story?

I got pregnant in May of 1994.  We had been trying for a while, then J went to Thailand for a month.  When he got back, we got pregnant.

Then we PCSed to Ft. Drum, New York.  We drove from Alaska down through Canada down the Cassiar Highway.  It was fantastic. We went into the US in Washington and down to Seattle.  Then we headed across America to Pennsylvania.  We stayed North and viewed the sites along the way and making a pit stop in Minnesota.

We stayed in PA for a few weeks before we headed up to NY to see what would be our home for the next 2-3 years.  We got an apt. on post - so lucky!  We were very close to Canada, a great little farm, rivers, and Watertown, NY . . . Jason's birthplace.

There was not an OBGYN clinic on post so all appointments and deliveries had to be done in outlying cities.  We chose a great little clinic that was 1/2 doctors and 1/2 midwives.  I was going all natural baby!

I was sick the entire pregnancy and away from all family.  J was in the field much of the time too.  I couldn't hold down water most of the time but I gained a ton of weight anyway.  I think I gained 60 lbs about. Probably more around 50, but I was still HUGE!

I went into early labor that had to be stopped with one of those great shots.  Then I was sent home to let the baby cook a bit more.  I had braxton/hicks all of the time and was still uncomfortable. I also had what they called a rejection rash.  They said it is common when the child has a different blood type than the mother.   As my due date neared everything intensified.  7 days before I was due, my water broke when I went to the fridge one morning for some skim milk.  That was at 7 a.m.

The nursery had been ready for over a month and we were ready to go.  We headed to Watertown, about 20 min South of where we were living.  We were met by our mid-wife and looked forward to one of those great births you see in a movie.  I can remember parts of it like it were yesterday.  I was up and down and in and out of the shower.  The pain was more than I could imagine and I eventually called out for pain meds.  I got what I asked for, but it was just too late.  All the meds did was give me a fuzzy head and make it impossible to yell out.  The pain never let up and eventually the mid-wife stepped aside and allowed a doctor to do an episiotomy.  I remember yelling, "cut him out!".  I was in active/pushing labor for just over 2.5 hours at this point.  I did push him out on my own finally and my first impression:

He's got his daddy's hands!

Boy did he ever!  His palms were huge!  We didn't know he'd be a boy, but we were pretty sure.  Had he been a girl, we had picked out the name Lydia.  He was a Jason though.  Jason for his dad, Patrick for his grandmothers, Harvey for his grandpa and me, and last name Donald.  Little trick about his name, if he amounted to nothing when he grew up, he's still be a doctor. Jason PhD!

That was about when they wheeled him out of there and under some lights.  He failed his APGAR and was about as yellow as you could get.  We didn't know what any of that meant of course.  Our hospital stay was less than a disaster.  The doctors couldn't help us out with Jason because we were military.  They were available for emergencies only.  Anything else would have to wait for a military doc or student to do their rounds.  A student came in to perform his circumcision.  We should have been scared when they said she was a student, but we didn't know any better.  It was done wrong, which we didn't know either.  He actively bled for over 24 hours, which we thought was normal.  Finally a nurse noticed he was bleeding through a diaper and she called in a doc to fix things.

I was able to nurse on my own and I assumed they were bathing him and all of the other things that needed done because they had him much of the time we were there.  WRONG.  On the day we were to be released, a nurse came in and taught me how to bathe him.  After he was done, I noticed he was not breathing.

No, really.  He was not breathing.  The nurse yelled at me that he was choking.  How the hell can a baby choke was basically my response.  J had stepped out a moment but came back in as the nurse was in panic mode because I couldn't clear his airway.

That was when I learned that is what those blue sucky things were for.  She pushed his cart out into the hall and started running to the NICU.  RUNNING!  Like in a movie. J running with her.  Me standing in the middle of the hall crying.

I don't know what they did in the Nursery.  I couldn't bring myself to move.  Eventually a nurse brought me down to look in a window to show me he was ok.  Then they sent us home.


I don't know how old he was when I finally laid him down.  Really.  I rode in the back seat with him every where we went.  He sat upright in everything we owned.  We even propped his cradle up.  He had a bouncy seat that propped him up.  His car seat was mostly upright.  None of that really mattered though because he slept in my arms, one hand always on the blue sucky thing.  He choked one time walking from the car to a store.  We had to run in and clear his airways.

I will never forget the stressful, sleepless moments, one hand on him and one on the blue sucky thing.

We were always clearing his airways.   When he was two months old, I came back to Alaska with him and my mom was horrified and his coloring.  Yep, no one addressed the jaundice.  It took couple weeks, but my mom cleared it up by having him sleep in front of the living room window day and night.

Jason is a treasure.  He still suffers from reflux and I suppose he always will.  After he is 16, he will need to be scoped and probably have to have it fixed.  For now it is controlled with meds and trying to keep stress out of his life.  So he plays hockey . . . to relieve stress . . . hahaha

Jason has been stressing us out since birth with his ER visits where ever he goes and whatever he does.
He has also been making us proud every step of the way.
Happy Birthday Jase!



I went into early labor with Jason that brought us to the hospital in Watertown a month early.