Looking back over the past year...

Last year, I ended up in the hospital with very high blood pressure just past the mid-point in my pregnancy.  I started my hospital stay on October 18, 2009 - we were told due to the nature of my condition at that time, the only way to cure the high blood pressure was deliver but if I was willing and they could stabilize it, we would stay in the hospital, on bed rest, until they needed to deliver.  I was in it for the long haul - or so I thought.  We made it until Friday, October 23, 2009 - that morning the doctors said things were looking better, I was feeling better, so we had a goal of getting through the weekend.  I finally got to eat some food and we were hoping to get a little further along.  My body and little Jack had other ideas, that afternoon, in an emergent situation where they lost him on the monitor for a moment, we were rushed to the OR and he was delivered at 1:15pm a tiny 1lb 10oz and 12.5 in long.  I was unable to see him, Dustin was able to go back into a room and briefly see him before he was taken up to the NICU.  My first glimpses of him were through pictures Dustin took when he went up to the NICU - we didn't even name him until the next day.  The first few months of his life were a roller coaster of ups and downs - ventilator, CPAP, oxygen, feeding tubes, surgeries. 

Those things all happened while Jack was in the NICU - once he came home, he was on oxygen but taking his bottles until late March when they found a laryngeal cleft (rare birth defect) and he had to go on a feeding tube to avoid aspirating his food which allowed him to come off oxygen more quickly (yay!), he had surgery to repair his cleft in May, so as of June, he was off oxygen but still on his feeding tube, he had passed his swallow study so we knew he was safe to eat but he didn't want to.  So we continued to work on the feeding thing and we finally got a breakthrough in August when another doctor allowed us to completely take out the feeding tube and do a 'wean' - it worked!!  We have been tube free for 2 months now and he is still eating well.  This Saturday is Jack's 1st birthday, we are so thankful as to how well he is doing and look forward to the next years of fun!!

Here is just a brief look at Jack's progress over the past year in pictures!

The big 1 year old!!