The Sparks family welcomed Jena Leighanne into the world at 11:44 am on April 17th, 2010. We tried to have her a little earlier. Here are some shots of what I like to call round one...
A couple of weeks before she was born I was having contractions 5-7 min apart for more than 12 hours so I decided to go on in to the hospital only to be sent back home because I wasn't in "real labor". Then, on Friday the 16th I was in terrible pain all day and throughout the night and by Saturday morning I had had enough and decided we weren't waiting until my scheduled surgery day on Monday. We went into the hospital around 10:00 on Saturday morning and by 11:44 she was born!!!
Here is my goofy family right before surgery...
The professional father... (isn't he cute!)
Okay, so when they held Jena over the curtain for the first time and I got a peek at all that black hair I thought, "Whose baby is that?"
Jena was a surprise from the moment we found out about her and she hasn't stopped surprising us since! Our beautiful brunette was born weighing 7lbs. 4 oz. and she was 19 inches long. Her sisters absolutely ADORE her! Jill so much so that we have to keep her a good foot from Jena at all times for fear she might hug her to death. When Jill is in the same room with her she watches her at all times and will periodically point to her and say, "Baby". She will pet her really softly on the head and say, "soft". You can see in her eyes how badly she wants to just squeeze her. And Jane has been beyond great. She also wants to hold her all day. Here are some shots I got when I finally let her...
Another surprise we found out in the hospital was that Jena was born with Colobomas in both of her eyes. A coloboma is a birth defect where the iris is not formed all of the way leaving a pupil that looks more like a keyhole rather than a circle. By itself colobomas are of no consequence other than Jena will have a sensitivity to light and really cool looking eyes. However, sometimes colobomas are associated with a slew of other issues one of which can be heart defects. While we were in the hospital Jena's doctor heard a heart murmur and after an ultrasound of the heart we found out that Jena has two heart defects both of which are self correcting and should be healed in a few months which will be confirmed with another test they will run then. In the meantime they have sent Jena's blood off to run genetic testing on to see if she shows up with a genetic marker for a particular syndrome that is associated with colobomas, heart defects and other problems as well. We are very hopeful that Jena won't show up with this marker and we are praying about it daily. We feel so blessed to have this special girl. She truly completes our family!
