On this day, one year ago...

This happened.  Yep, Jeez got to come home  All 5 lbs 4 oz of him.  We thought he was HUGE after watching him grow in the NICU for 13 days.  What a celebration this was!

There are actually some things I have written down in your journal that I have been writing for you, and have debated copying over into this blog.  I still don't know which ones will make the cut and which ones will remain exclusively between me and you. Like your birth story.  Even though your daddy and I feel like those are the coolest pictures ever in life...not sure the whole world would.  But I do want to say a few things about your NICU life as you and I both knew it.  Rewind again:  You came 5 weeks early, actually the day after we attended childbirth class, so we guess you were paying attention as well and figured we now had it all figure out *insert sarcastic laugh.  Bottom line you didn't want to miss another moment of life and you know what? I'm happy about that because I wasn't ready (looking back, hindsight is fun b/c you can change your feelings right?) to not spend another day without looking at you in person. So...the NICU. We were never sure just how long you would be in there b/c that's sort of an unspoken rule in there.  Let's not throw out false timelines, which I get, but at the same time can be very hard for someone, or a family of someones, this includes you, that doesn't what we are working with.  If you tell us we can get it done if we  do A. B. and C. well then, absolutely we will get it done.  That is life drive right?  I feel like your daddy had been talking to you about this for a while before you even made your debut.  Wake up everyday and be a champion right? But we didn't know.  Anything.  We had never had a baby obviously but even more so, who has a baby that is in the NICU?  As many scenarios that had run through my head about how your birth would go down, this was definitely NOT one of them.  Everyone I knew gets to shower, ok not all of them, that's just justifying to myself why I look so aweful in our hospital pics from the beginning :), have their baby, stay a few days, and take them home when they leave.  NEVERRR did I imagine getting discharged without you in my arms able to take that first photo getting in the car to the carseat that of course had been installed for weeks because we were prepared.  Not us. Not the Jeffreys. We were ambushed....but ambushed by the greatest blessing in the world, which leads me to continue on to tell one of the greatest stories of just how awesome God is and how his plan is always the best.

You ended up being a resident of the NICU for 13 days.  The nurses and Dr's were amazing and you didn't have one setback. You didn't actually digest any formula they gave you before mommy's milk came in but once you were on breastmilk, you didn't skip a beat.  I had NO idea that when you had a preemie, the content of your milk actually changes b/c your body knows this baby came early..and needs extra fats, proteins, etc  Once again, how awesome is God? Exactly.  Our very first nurse was Wanda and August 13th was the first time that I got to hold you.  I could barely walk but I felt like I could have sprinted down there to get my hands on you.  Daddy wheeled me down there and you looked so peaceful.  Wanda let us do what they call "Kangaroo care" which is actually supposed to help preemies develop faster.  Here is the first time I held you...

You just snuggled right up with your face near my heart and I knew right away you knew who I was.  You knew that heartbeat, the only person in the world to hear it on the inside and now on the outside.  We just sat like this forever and continued this kangaroo care for the first few days of your life.  That was "our time"  You moved from an open crib, to an incubator, to another crib before getting dismissed.  We started you on a feeding tube, but you quickly moved to a bottle.  The highlight of our day was holding you and feeding you.  We would bring books to read to you and "On the Night you were Born" was your favorite.  We worked hard to be there at all times and when we were at home I would call in the middle of the night to see how your feedings were going, and then wake daddy up to tell him that you had digested your food and even made a poop ;)  But the one blessing I want to point out from you being in the NICU is the way it brought your daddy and myself closer in our Faith and closer to each other than I ever even imagined was possible.  We blessed your food daily and prayed with you all of the time.  We received prayers from all around the world from those that already loved you so much. And with that faith and our love, and God smiling down and saying "Thank you Jonah, for you have already accomplished your first mission in life on the outside world, for your mommy and daddy are now "ready" - One day the nurse just said "Are you ready to take Jonah home?" And after a minor freak out moment of I don't know are we? We absolutely were.  So there it is....August 25th, 2012, exactly one year ago today, the day that we walked your into our home and it was never the same.