Well I have a friend who has an AMAZING blog...Jamie Sutherland Williams...and I've just finished looking through her blog and realize what an awesome opportunity a blog is to document your life! So...that being said, I 've decided to try my hand at blogging. Those of you who know me know that I'm famous for getting into something 110% at the beginning and somehow, without me meaning for it to, it sort of fizzles out. Well, I'm going to try REALLY hard not to let that happen with this, so if you notice my posts become few and far between...call me on it!
Little bit about us...Jesup, Ally, Rylan, and Lyla Keown. Jesup and I just celebrated out five year wedding anniversary! We were married March 26, 2005. I am a 6th grade teacher and Jesup is in the construction business.
We had our first child, Rylan Vaughn Keown on November 1, 2007. He was a huge blessing as we had been trying to get pregnant for some time, and after a tubal pregnancy resulting in my losing one of my fallopian tubes, we were very nervous about being able to get pregnant at all. I found out I was pregnant with Rylan just before we were going to have some tests done to see why I wasn't getting pregnant. After going back and forth about whether or not we wanted to know the sex of the baby, we found out we were having a boy at our 20 week ultrasound. We were so excited! Then began the naming process...for awhile we had what we thought was the perfect name, Harbor Vaughn Keown. We knew his middle name would be Vaughn after Jesup's dad, but we really wanted to have a unique first name. With a dad named Jesup, I thought he needed a unique name too! We had pretty much settled on Harbor, some people even gave us gifts with the initials HVK....oops! About a month before he was due, we were watching a Texas Tech football game on TV (Jesup's brother plays football for TTU) and they did a bio on Rylan Reed, a player on the team, and I thought..."hmmm, Rylan, that's a pretty unique name. If the only other person I've heard of lives in Texas, then we're pretty safe!" So I pretty much settled on Rylan right then and there, convincing Jesup was another story, but I explained he already had decided 2 of the 3 names, Vaughn and Keown, so why couldn't I pick the other one? We decided not to tell anyone our decision lest we get change it again and get another gift with the wrong intials! I went into labor on Halloween around 3:30 pm. I had been saying the entire 9 months that I WOULD NOT have my baby on Halloween, but come to think of it, I guess it really wasn't up to me was it? Anyway, of course us being green as far as having babies was concerned we went straight to the hospital. In my defense, I did have to go to Greenville and I was not trying to miss out on the epidural! We checked in around 6:30 pm and it being the first grandbaby on both sides, our ENTIRE familes came and hung out the whole time.
Rylan was pretty slow to make his appearance and it seemed from the minute we walked into Greenville Memorial that everything went wrong!
In a nutshell, the first epidural didn't work and when they finally took me seriously and called the anesthesiologist and he obviously didn't like being woken up in the middle of the night and instead of repositioning the epidural he actually pulled it out after he RIPPED the tape (and my skin) off my back. Anyway, Rylan FINALLY arrived at 8:22 am November 1, 2007. He was big baby (he definitely has Keown in him) 8 lbs. 1 oz. and because I was in labor so long...26 hours to be exact...I should've had a C-section, but while he was in the birth canal his shoulder depressed the umbilical cord and he had limited oxygen for 45 minutes. When he arrived, he was grey and they took him straight to the NICU, I didn't even get to hold him. They told us he would be in the NICU for at least 2 weeks and that there was a possibility of brain damage and seizures.
After MANY, MANY prayers, Rylan was able to go home with us 3 days later and I'm happy to report he's the smartest 2 1/2 year old I know!
Now, for Lyla's story. As you may have noticed, Lyla and Rylan are 15 months apart, and NO she wasn't planned, but she's a blessing all the same. I found out I was pregnant with her when Rylan was only 6 months old. Before I make this next statement, understand that I had severe post partum depression with Rylan and had just begun to feel normal again. I was devastated when I found out I was pregnant. I cried for a week. My dad finally told me basically to suck it up and that because of how difficult it was for us to get pregnant with Rylan and my only having one fallopian tube not many women would have been able to get pregnant, so God obviously wanted us to have this baby and I better start looking at this pregnancy as a blessing instead of a curse. Good one Dad! When we went in for our 20 week ultrasound, they were unable to conclusively tell us the sex of the baby. She kept her little legs closed, which her Daddy says is a good thing! But the ultrasound showed what looked like an abnormality in the heart (which turned out to be nothing), so we were sent for a 3D ultrasound during which we found out we were having a girl! I couldn't have been more excited! Jesup, on the other hand, wanted another boy because as he said he "didn't know how to deal with girls" LOL! With 3 sisters, he should've been an expert! My pregnancy, as with Rylan, was uneventful and wonderful! I wanted a unique name for my girl and my dad suggested I look at family names. I knew I wanted her middle name to be Jones, after my beloved Nannie, Bobbie Jones, who passed away 5 years ago. She was the most wonderful person I've ever known, so I wanted her somewhere in my daughter's name. Unfortunately the name "Barbara" didn't make my favorites list. Her middle name was Jo Anne and her maiden name was Baltzegar, none of which were on the list either, so I settled for Jones. My sister is named after Lila Beaty Masters, our great-great grandmother, and I really liked the name Lila. It's an older name, so it's not one you hear all the time. I decided to replace the "i" with a "y" to make the spelling a little unusual and because Rylan and I both have "y's" in our names. I went into labor around 8:00 pm February 10, during a hair appointment no less...I was trying desperately to get back to being a blonde! I had been having contractions off and on all day at work (it was my last day and I could barely walk!) but I was NOT going to miss my hair appointment! This time, I knew better than to go straight to the hospital. So I waited until a little after midnight to head to the hospital. This time I delivered at Anderson Women's and Children's and let me tell you I would NEVER go anywhere else!! From the minute we walked in the door, this experience was vastly difference than the first. It was WONDERFUL! Lyla Jones Keown arrived at 8:01 am February 11, 2009. She weighted 7 lbs. 6 0z, which coincedentally enough is also how much my sister weighed at birth! You know how most newborns are, well, let's face it...ugly? Lyla wasn't and I know it's not just my biased opinion because I'm her mom because I thought Rylan was atrocious looking when he was first born, but Lyla...she was perfect.
One more interesting story dealing with Lyla that has to be documented. Lyla was diagnosed with severe acid reflux when she was an infant, so she spit up ALOT. When she was a month old, in March 2009, we went on a vacation at the beach with Jesup's family for Spring Break. One night I was putting Rylan to bed and Lyla was downstairs with everyone else in her swing. Jesup and his mom came running up the stairs with Lyla screaming for me to get the bulb to suction her out (she would sometimes spit up so much that she'd get choked on it). She threw up in her swing and choked on it and quit breathing. When we got her suctioned out, she was limp, pale, and lifeless at which point we called 911. The first responder that came checked her oxygen levels which were at 80%...not good...and he recommended we let the ambulance come and take us to Beaufort Memorial. She was unresponsive and clammy and just not my lively Lyla. When we got to the ER and after what seemed like FOREVER (and actually was about 6-7 hrs), they had finally decided to admit us and have us stay overnight so they could perform some sort of test to determine that she did in fact have acid reflux (duh! we already knew that) and in the midst of making that decision a team of nurses rushes in and begins checking her heart rate. They tell us they need to do an EKG and directly after the EKG is read they tell us we need to be medevac'ed via helicopter to MUSC in Charleston. Needless to say, we were panicked, but we trusted what they said. Around 5 am Lyla and I went on our first (and I hope only) helicopter ride to MUSC. Jesup had to drive from Beaufort with his parents and meet us there. We were admitted to the PICU (Pediatric ICU) and after doing many, many tests including an ultrasound of her heart, they determined her heart was perfect. They compared their EKG to the one done at Beaufort Memorial and determined that the heart monitor at Beaufort Memorial was on an adult setting as opposed to an infant setting and that caused the machine to to read Lyla's heart rates as double what it really was. We were released 2 days later with prescriptions for (gasp!) acid reflux medications and a clean bill of heart health. Now, while I do fault Beaufort Memorial for being, well...stupid, I have no doubt that the incredible amount of prayers being lifted up on Lyla's behalf were what caused us to be able to go home heart-problem free. We had a few more episodes after that of Lyla choking on her spit up, none was as dramatic and she finally grew out of her acid reflux around 1 year of age. Ear infections were the next problem we encountered and during Spring Break of the next year (April 2010) she had tubes put in (see picture of her just before surgery...too cute!) and has been great since! Hopefully her health problems are a thing of the past!
Fast forward almost 2 years and Rylan is now 2 1/2 and Lyla is 17 months! It's been quite an amazing and rewarding adventure! I can't wait to see what else life has in store for the Keown Family...stay tuned!
Of course, Lyla can't resist a photo opportunity
Poor, poor pitiful Jesup