Announcing: Cole Jaxon Reinhardt

 

Cole Jaxon Reinhardt

“Not again,” is what I thought as Jalina told me that her amniotic fluid was low and the doctors wanted her to stay overnight at the hospital 6 weeks before her due date. This was almost exactly the same time that Jalina was admitted into the hospital and had to have an emergency c-section with Drew four years ago. I fearfully imagined what it would be like if Jalina had to stay at the hospital on bedrest while I watched Drew and Blake for 6 weeks. Thankfully after a night of IVs and monitoring, Jalina’s amniotic fluid elevated to a healthy level and she was released the next day. Whew!

The rest of the pregnancy went very smoothly until one week before the due date when her fluid level was so low that the machine couldn’t get a reading at all. The doctor decided to induce. I received a phone call from Jalina saying I needed to leave work to come to the hospital. Jalina desired to have a natural birth without any medicine or intervention. We joked that all it took was for the doctor to tell Jalina that she was going to be induced for her body to jump start into labor.  Soon afterwards, she started dilating just fast enough to satisfy the doctors so they didn’t need to induce or give pain medicine. It started getting later in the evening and the doctor said there was another mother down the hall who was neck and neck with Jalina’s progression. The doctor didn’t want to be taking care of the other patient while Jalina was giving birth and again recommended we try to move on the delivery. We decided we’d wait and the timing worked out wonderfully. Jalina was an all-star through the 10 hours of laboring and the nurses kept saying how amazed they were at how well she was handling the pain without any medication.

Cole Jaxon Reinhardt was born on December 22^nd, 2015 at 8:47pm at St. Francis Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO. He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long. Cole too amazed us at how well he slept through the first night, and we are hoping that is a good sign for the future.

We did decide to return to the States for the birth in accordance with the Ugandan doctors’ and staff of EMI’s recommendation. I will work from the EMI office here in Colorado Springs for the time being, but we will reevaluate our ministry location after we first get a handle on being parents of three children.

A special thanks goes out to Nana and Papa who came to assist with this busy season and watched Drew and Blake while Jalina was in the hospital. They brought them to see Cole for the first time the next morning and Drew and Blake were very sweet to him.  We are blessed to welcome Cole into this world and especially into the Reinhardt Family.  Jalina was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve just in time for us to have Christmas morning all together.

Thanks everyone for your encouragement and we appreciate your prayers for us and our now bigger family.