If you have missed out on the last year of our lives--In February we bought our first house in Rockwell, NC. A great house with a huge kitchen and a great open floor plan. We have caring neighbors and good friends close by. Couldn't have asked for much more! But we got it---on the same day we closed on our house, the doctor confirmed that we were pregnant!
We had a happy healthy baby boy on Oct. 5, 2008. John Joseph Garcia weighed in at 7lbs 10oz, 19 in at 2:56am. His arrival into the world was a little less than graceful, he wasn't breathing and had to be resucitated, but overall we were very blessed. My parents joined us for the first week of John's life, Matt's parents were there for week 2 and Matt's mom stuck around for an additional 2 weeks to help out around the house. Needless to say, John has plenty of people loving him!
Two short weeks after John was born, Pfeiffer University made several cutbacks due to the economy and I lost my job. The University officially laid off 11 people (as of Jan. 5). On the upside, my maternity leave ran through the end of December---so I never had to go back to work! In that regard, I faired better than many of my collegues. It's given me the chance to be a stay at home mom--which I'm loving! And opened the door for the next big change in our life...
About 4 weeks after I lost my job with Pfeiffer, Matt was offered a transfer with his company, LabSynergy. Apprehensive (we just bought at house in Feb, remember), we weighed the pros and cons very carefully. The transfer won out, as he is being moved to the St. Louis area, putting us closer to my parents and John's grandparents. We're figuring that we can use the extra help with John and it will make holiday travel exponentially easier. After 4 years in NC and lots of promises to move back towards the center of the country, it seems as though God was giving us a swift kick in the @$$. We announced to the families that we were moving over Thanksgiving weekend.
Fast forward two more weeks and we knew we were making the right decision. John found himself in the hospital with extreme anemia and moderate jaundice. In nine days we spent 2 nights and 4 days at Brenner Children's Hospital and John endured 5 blood transfusions. It's been a scary and nerve-wracking time for us to say the least. Having that extra support from family is going to be nice. John's doing fine for now - we did make it to STL for Christmas after a short delay for one last transfusion. The doctor's have not diagnosed the problem as of yet, but feel confident that a diagnosis is in the future. In the meantime, they are also pretty certain we will face a few more blood transfusions before we can kick this. But in honor of celebrating the small victories, his bloodwork on Monday was the best we've seen in 3 weeks! He's happy and smiling, doing all the things a 3 month old should, so it doesn't seem to be bothering him nearly as much as it bothers mom and dad.
So, the last 3 months have been life changing! We're excited to be moving and ready to start the next chapter of our lives. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we muddle through the next few months (selling our house, moving, buying a house, doctors appointments and transfusions, etc.)
Keep in touch!Love and peace in the New Year!
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