Frerx Adventures: June 2011

Trevor, our youngest son, celebrated his 25th birthday today in a big way. I think he received the most precious birthday gift possible –- an 8 lb 2 oz, 21.5” baby boy named Jameson David Frericks, coming in to the world at 3:29 pm. What he will actually be called is somewhat vague at the moment since I’ve already heard Jameson, JB, Jamesie, but probably most often he was still mostly referred to as Stitch which has been his nickname for the last six months or so. We’ll see if that sticks!

An interesting tidbit in this age of technology, is how we grandparents actually first found out Stitch was born. It has to do with his first picture, at about 10 minutes old, that I’ve included below. But more on that later.

We actually knew that the baby would be arriving no later than today which made it much easier to plan our latest week of RV travel. We spent the weekend with Kyle and Jenni in Carlinville and then scooted up here to the Chicago area on Monday. We are actually staying at Leisure Lake RV Resort in Shorewood, IL, which is about 45 minutes from the kids and the hospital in Palos Park, IL.

Although the baby wasn’t due until 7-7-11, the doc decided that the baby was plenty big and, based on positioning, very ready to be born, so she scheduled Leah in to the Palos Community Hospital early Thursday morning.

By the time we arrived at the hospital at 10:00 am, they had induced labor and Leah’s room was a beehive of activity. Leah and Trevor kept themselves busy updating friends via Facebook and text messages.

They started the epidural for Leah after the first major labor pain. I was amazed at how she continued to show contractions and make progress with no real pain. Shortly after 2 pm they decided the birth was imminent and so all of us except Trevor were scooted out of the room so they could share this momentous occasion, just the two of them.

At this point it seemed like things were taking forever. Amy’s Mom, sister and I were really getting antsy. We didn’t know it in the waiting room but, apparently, Leah’s doctor was suddenly pulled in to another delivery where there was problems and Leah was put in ‘a holding pattern’ for 45 minutes. I guess they can do that with the epidurals, but we didn’t know it in the waiting room and were really anxious. Leah said the birth itself really wasn’t that bad and she didn’t even call Trev any bad names! Once the baby was born, they soon had him swaddled and in Leah’s arms. However, they told Trev the rest of us couldn’t come back in until after they’d cleaned up the room. So in the meantime Trev took the first photo above and posted it on Facebook. About 5 minutes later, Ken and I both received Congratulation texts from our “#3 son”, Luke Henke. This caught me by surprise since we were still waiting to hear the baby had been born. I flipped my phone over to Facebook and lo and behold up pops a picture of my new grandson!! So even though we were only a few rooms down from the birth, the whole world got their first glimpse of Stitch before we did!! But that’s ok since we were soon getting our face-to-face introduction with the handsome little man.

We were met by this glowing, happy little family.

Personally, I’ve never seen anyone look so good after giving birth. Leah was amazing!

We all took our turn getting to say hello to the little fella.

Here’s Grandma Amy with Aunt Emily looking on.

And Grandpa Kenny enjoy his moments with his first grandchild.

And, of course, I got my fair share of time with him!

Later, Trev looked every bit the super proud papa as he showed off the little guy to his friend, Jeff Sobut. All indications are Stitch came in to this world in excellent health, with an Apgar score of 9.9. They were already arguing which position he’d be playing once he made it to the NFL.

Here’s the first picture capturing the three generations of Frericks men.

Leah’s friend, Erin, drove in from Iowa for the big occasion with a giant personalized chocolate chip cookie that Leah shared with all of us.

The room was quickly filling with family and friends come to meet the new little guy, so we decided about 6pm that it was time to make our exit. But not before getting plenty of ‘Stitch time’.