The Jones' Journey

Wow! Its almost been a year! Baby?

2011-03-02T12:44:00.000-08:00

I decided it was time!

It's time to finally write what is going on again in our lives... A year after Josiah.... but first let me do a brief catch up!

April 10th 2010- The birth of Josiah Phineas Jones. 7 weeks early and amazingly beautiful. I was in Pittsburgh and missed everything, got home at 11:35 pm. 11 hours after his birth. Kimber out on MgSO4 and incoherent. tears, lots of them!

April 11th 2010- The doctors inform us that Josiah's chest wall and lungs are severely underdeveloped and he will never be able to sustain life on his own.

April 12th- Kimber meets Josiah for the first time... tears, lots of them!

April 14th- doctors meet with us and our parents to go over options for Josiah... bad news... we have to let him go. God's peace, thick!

April 15th- Josiah's final day in pain... tears, tears, tears, lots of them! God's goodness, grace, peace, hope, and presence, thick! 4:35pm Josiah's last heart beat...tears, lots of them!

April 19th- Josiah's funeral and memorial with family,and an amazing pastoral staff from the Well, giving tribute to Josiah's life and our journey.

April-June: a swirl of pain, grief, loss of hope, questions, hurt, did I mention pain?

July-October: recovery... getting back to life and trying to create our new understanding of God and how He fits into this new paradigm of our understanding.

November- Conversation with Rick Taylor... transforms plans and sets 2011 in motion. IUD gets taken out and Kimber gets pregnant again. We put offer on house and get it!

December- move out of Condo and in with my parents waiting for Escrow to close. Had an amazing Christmas with all of my family and an amazing new year with Kimber's family.

January- Move into house and try to get settled... kimber starts new job at home health.

February- Find out that Baby in Kimber's belly is growing and developing normally. Good news! I promise it is really good news.

So now that is a very brief picture of last year, but all in all it was one of the worst and yet best years of my life. God has taken us on a journey of grief that I would never ask to not go through. We have both grown so much and know that we are better for all that we went through.

Josiah's condition is a rare genetic issue, which means that every time we get pregnant we have a 25% chance of everything happening exactly as it did with baby Jos. But according to doctor's this time around everything looks good. They will continue to monitor the baby throughout the pregnancy and said that if everything looks good around 24 weeks then the baby should be fine. Kimber as of today is 15weeks.

Thank you for everything... I'll try and keep this updated more often.

Josiah Phineas Jones

2010-03-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

So we have had a few more Doctors appointments recently and I wanted to let you know what was going on. The doctors still are not sure what the diagnosis is. They definitely still see some issues with his feet and chest. We did receive a little hope this week when we found out that Josiah's chest is in the 26th percentile. Which is actually good. Usually, with Fetal Akenesia, the chest does not grow at all and it seems to be growing a little!! Thanks for your prayers in that. Josiah has also been moving a lot more. I was actually able to feel him kick! (he's going to be a soccer player like his uncle JJ) This was just so good for both of us! He is not supposed to move, really at all and Kimber has said that Josiah has been moving quite a bit.
In the midst of all of this I have a few more concerns. Kimber has begun to swell quite significantly. Her blood pressure has been high and the doctors are a little nervous about preeclampsia(?). Not sure what that means, but the doctors said they would let us know more if it starts to really worry them. Please pray for Kimber! I really do not want to have any more complications as my heart is weary and tired already. Thank you all for being a part of our lives. God bless you all. If have any questions please feel free to ask! Just leave it in the comment section.

Baby Josiah

2010-02-22T10:14:00.002-08:00

As many of you know, Kimber is pregnant with our first child. We are currently 26 weeks along and buzzing right along. But what some of you may not know is that the pregnancy is not going as smooth as we would like. It has taken a while for me to get to this point and be able to blog it, but here I go. (hopefully i stay tear free)

Not too long after we got back from Missouri, Kimber and I had another chck up with the doctor. Well it didn't go very well. We had an ultrasound and found out that our little baby boy was not developing correctly. After several doctor visits, ultrasounds, and many different diagnosis, Kimber and I have received a final diagnosis. Baby Josiah is currently diagnosed with a problem called Fetal Akensia. It essentially means that Josiah is not moving enough and as a result is underdeveloped. Mainly his chest cavity is too small, which is leading the doctors to believe that Josiah will have some major repiratory issues once he is born. He also has clubbed feet and a small sack of fluid on the back of his neck. With all of these complications, the doctors have told us that Josiah will not likely make it through the delivery.

It has not been easy at all and has felt a lot like a roller coaster going out of control, and all you can do is hold on and hope to make it. I know many of you have been praying for Josiah and his health, but we have a new prayer request. We ask that you would start to pray for God's glory to be made known through whatever happens. I appreciate all of your prayers for healing and believe God has heard our prayers. But please understand that we are trying to change our perspective about the situation. We will and still do desire to have Josiah as part of our family till our deaths, but God is helping us to realize that our lives and even our children's lives are to be used to glorify Him. So we ask that you would pray that God would do whatever will bring Him the most glory. Through life or death we want God to be glorified in all that we do.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers! I love you all and hope that God is doing great things in all of your lives. Please pray with us and may God be exalted and magniifed through our lives!

helping a friend!

2010-02-22T10:14:00.001-08:00

One of my friends just finished a new Fund accounting software for nonprofits and churches - check it out at www.aplossoftware.com

Two Deaths to Life

2009-11-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

For many of you this may be an old story because you know how much I love to talk. But I felt that something as amazing as these last two weeks of our life should be written down and out there for all to hear.
As many of you know Kimber's sister Khrista had her beautiful baby Sophie on 11/5/09. I was in Fresno at work when Kimber sent me a text from Springfield MO, where Jeff and Khrista live, telling me all about the details of our niece's birth. Everything was perfect. Khrista's labor only lasted about seven hours from start of contractions to birth. But at that time was when everything started to go south.
Soon after Sophie was born they had to rush Khrista into The OR because the placenta did not come out with the baby. In the OR they attempted to remove the placenta, but as they did Khrista's uterine wall stayed attached to the placenta and was pulled out with the placenta completely inverting the uterus. they tried to repare it and put her back together but it did not work. Only about ten minutes later, the doctors decided they needed to do an emergency hysterectomy. Khrista was losing blood at a rapid rate and this was their last resort to stop it. This is when I received Kimber's first text message of distress.
They took Khrista again to the OR and started the procedure. During the procedure Khrista was losing so much blood that she actually coded (her heart stopped) for two minutes. The anesthesiologist tried to revive her and after two minutes was finally able to. (He later revealed to us that the procedure he had to do on her had never worked for any other patient in his career)She made it through the surgery, but the bleeding would not stop. In recovery she continued to bleed out and they continued to push more blood into her. This was Kimber's first experience of what pushing blood actually meant. As a nurse she knew what it meant, but it was shocking to see because the nurses were literally grabbing the bags of blood and squeezing them to force the blood into Khrista's body.
I only received a few texts after this, but I was already starting to realize the severity of the situation. I soon found out that she had 4 stints in the OR and they could not stop the bleeding. She had contracted a disorder called DIC that prevented her blood from clotting appropriately. In the fourth stint in the OR she coded again from all of the blood loss. Soon after this she was stable, but still bleeding. The doctors decided they needed to do an angiogram to find out where she was bleeding from. (Jeff told me that at this point the doctors told him that Khrista may not make it to the radiology department which was only 300 feet away) the doctors moved her as carefully and rapidly as possible. They had now given Khrista a grim 5 to 10 percent chance of surviving the complications.
At this point I was driving down to LAX to fly out and be there in the morning. Unfortunately every one's cell phone was dead and we had about a 2 hour time of silence. Thankfully Jimmy was riding with me to LA or I may have gone crazy with worry. (thanks Jimmy)
They found through the angiogram that she did not have any bleeding issues any more and was finally stabilizing. They intibated and sedated her and finally moved her to the ICU for the night. The next morning when I arrived at the hospital I went in to see Khrista and she looked nothing like herself. She was completely swollen throughout her entire body and my heart just hurt to see her this way. Every one was exhausted and stressed. My father-in-law Darol had raced down from Duluth, her two brothers, Matt and Micah, and their Aunt Rachel drove throughout the night to get there, and Jeff's family had arrived earlier the day before because they were only in Kansas City. All any of us could do was wait and pray. All we had was the faith that we knew God is ALWAYS good.
Then the Glory of God began to shine like I have never experienced. The prayer that went out for Khrista literally reached to all the corners of the earth. People were fervent in their prayer and passionately wished for her recovery even though many of them had never met Khrista. My mom called KLOVE and the radio station prayed for her nationally. Some of our friends family started praying all the way in Australia and even prayed for us at their church, called HILLSONG!!! God was moving through the hearts of people and instructing them to pray.
Everything that Kimber felt was needed, we sent out as texts for prayer. We prayed for her accelertated heart rate and God answered. We prayed fro her low oxygen levels and God answered. We prayed for swelling, temperature, bleeding, fluid levels, and organ functions, AND GOD ANSWERED!!! For four days we sent out texts for prayer and every morning we came back to the hospital and she was healed from whatever we asked for. It didn't matter what it was we prayed for, God just continued to perform for Khrista his healing power.
If you have never experienced this type of answer to prayer before, know that it happens and it happened to my sister. It does not always occur like this as we know because one of the families we got to know in the waitng room lost their son while we were there, even though they were praying hard too. But god chose to answer and reveal himself through Khrista. She recovered so fast that she left the ICU on Monday and was discharged on Tuesday from the hospital. (The complicaqtions all started on thursday!!)
I believe that God's healing miracle is not just that He heals, but that He heals rapidly. Khrista is my walking miracle. I see pictures of her and it reminds me of how great God is. He did not need to or have to heal her, but He chose to and for that we have been blessed. Thank you Lord for who you are and all that you have done. My prayer is that some of you reading this see who God is through this miracle. Even the doctors exclaimed that it was not them that saved her, but that it was a higher power. May we never forget this miracle and may all of us be changed forever.