We have been neglecting this blog over the past month, so we apologize. We will be posting up more pictures of Jack soon! He is getting bigger every day. It is truly amazing to watch him literally see things for the first time.

Click here if you are looking for pictures of Jack.

We especially send our thanks to Great Gandma and Grandpa in Lawrenceville, IL. We truly wish we could be up there this year, but we have little Jack to be taking care of right now!

Since, we know everyone is probably excited to see Jack we put together this 10 minute video to show you Jack and to show you the travel system that you all helped us buy.

Enjoy!

This is a very short update, but we have been active on Facebook over the past 48 hours showing pictures to friends and keeping a lot of people updated. We just arrived home earlier this afternoon and I feel that I actually have an ounce of time to get this short update onto the site.

Here is a brief slideshow of some of the pictures that we have with Jack. Enjoy!

For some more picture of Jack click here.

Could it be Jack Bauer Bristow?
Jack Henry Bristow?
Jack O’Lantern Bristow?

Check back sometime tomorrow to find out, and if we have remembered to place you on our ‘to call’ list, then expect to receive a phone call from us as well!

After a few hours it became clear that this was another false alarm. I think this gives us six false alarms since week 28. So we have met most of the nurses in OB Triage, so we know the process really well.

We also know it is good for Jack to stay where he is right now, but we are very anxious to see him and today was disappointing in the sense that we thought the labor was real this time. Maybe tomorrow will be his birthday?

Well…. it is now 2:30am and I really should go and get some sleep.

This may sound like a simple move, but I wanted to move my blog and keep all my traffic. I had to find some way to redirect traffic dynamically to the proper page on the new site. This evening at about midnight I figured out how to do this. I am using a 301 redirect with some fancy variables in a .htaccess file. It is all rather techy, so I won’t get into it. But the result is very cool. You will begin to see non-family content vanish from thebristows.com over the next few hours or days, but all of the old URL’s to that content will still work by directing traffic to jeffbristow.com.

An example will be handy to explain this:
I have removed an article from thebristows.com that I wrote called ‘Pikter.com - The Ping.fm of Pictures’. The URL for this page is: http://www.thebristows.com/blog/tech/piktercom-the-pingfm-of-pictures This article no loner exists on this site. But if you click the link you are taken directly to this article on http://www.jeffbristow.com. This allows me to retain all of the traffic going to various articles on thebristows.com, and lets me move my personal blog to a completely different domain.

NOTE: If you subscribe to my personal blog you will need to change your RSS reader link. The new RSS Feed for my personal blog is: http://www.jeffbristow.com/feed

All day yesterday I thought we would be at the hospital at some point, but this morning I am sitting at work eagerly awaiting Jaime to say it is time to go to the Hospital.

This is a very exciting time, and it is making it far more real for me that I will be taking care of a little person very soon.

We will likely post updates via twitter and facebook more quickly than on this blog, so check there for any ‘latest and greatest’ updates on Jacks arrival.

PS: If you click on the pictures you can see a larger version.

Jaime began having contractions about 4 weeks ago, and really hasn’t ever seen them go away completely. This past week, the contractions grew stronger and it took a lot of effort for the OB Triage nurses to get them to slow down. My count could be wrong, but I think Jaime has been in to see the Doctor or OB Triage at least four times in the past couple of weeks.

Due to this, she has been asked to go on Bed Rest. This means she is supposed to be as inactive as possible and is no longer working. If you can, I know Jaime would appreciate visitors, phone calls, or emails since she literally can’t do anything.

Your prayers are also appreciated during this time, it is stressful, but we trust that God is with us and know that His hand is on us and in our lives.

The some positive news is that little Jack is doing just fine. He hasn’t been fazed by all of the contractions and is still growing well. He is also kicking, punching, and doing other athletic activities while in the belly. He will also respond when you press in on him just a bit. And that is really cool!

A few weeks ago it was decided that Jaime and I would not be able to adopt a 13 year old that we had grown to know and love. I have a special place in my heart for him, he is the son that I had hoped to bring into my family. That won’t be happening now, and I truly feel a deep loss. A loss that not even Jaime understands. I feel like I have lost a son. A son that I never had, at least in any legal sense.

The same day that this decision was made, Jaime began having contractions during dinner which took us to a very unscheduled trip to OB Triage. The contractions were confirmed and it was a scary few hours. I didn’t even have time to process the loss from earlier in the day and I was already tossing around all of the various scenarios of a son that could be born 3 months early. They were able to get Jaime’s contractions to stop and gave us the green light that we could go home near midnight. It was a real relief. But by this time I was so exhausted that all I could think about was going to sleep.

At 6:00am Jaime woke me up and said the contractions were back. So, I jumped up and got us down to the hospital once again. They ran a few more tests that they had not done the night before, and after a few hours we were once again able to go home. We came home and got some more rest and then the phone rang. We were asked to bring the young man that we were to adopt things back to the group home where he was staying. I offered to bring the items back the following morning but they were insistent that they be returned that evening, and if we didn’t bring them over, that they would need to come and get them. And under the later scenario we would not even be able to see him to say goodbye.

So, we packed up his things and drove them over to him. It was a very difficult drive for me. It almost seemed like a dream. Like somehow I would wake up and learn that this wasn’t actually happening. But waking up never happened, we arrived. This was really happening.

He seemed to be doing well when we saw him. He helped unpack his things from our car and we hung around for a little while. When it was time for us to go I couldn’t find any real words to say. I just told him that this is not how we thought that this would happen, and I cried and hugged him.

It was over. The adoption had officially fallen apart.

I have been feeling so conflicted lately. Saddened by the loss of an adopted son, yet excited about the arrival of a biological son to be born by November 25th. It is a difficult emotional teeter-totter that I find myself in. I am now finding a balance and am able to talk about all of this, and think about it without fighting off tears. Due to this I really haven’t talked much about any of it, not even to most of my close friends. And honestly not a whole lot with Jaime. I have pulled in and have been guarded, knowing that if I opened up I would crumble. Time has made me stronger and, that is why I am able to write this tonight.

Adoption - The Journey and the Update

I woke up late Friday night and Sunday night as I was being dragged underneath a train. It seemed very real. I didn’t wake up screaming this time, but I did wake up in a pool of sweat and completely freaked out as I came to the conclusion that I was at home and in my bed.

I don’t normally have dreams that I remember, and I am not prone to having nightmares either, so it makes me wonder if there is some purpose to these dreams. Maybe I should avoid railroad tracks that lead into tunnels? Maybe I just feel I have no control over a bad situation that is happening in my life? I am not 100% certain, but if this dream is supposed to mean something then I am leaning towards the theory that I currently feel like I am being run over by something that I have no control over, and can’t get out of the way of.

The Adoption process right now is not going as planned and in many ways I feel like ‘the system’ is the train and it is simply going to keep moving forward and will run over anyone that happens to be on the tracks. Now I know that this isn’t really how things are working, I do understand all of the reasons for the complications involved with our Adoption case. Yet, I can’t help but feel this way at times. Soon, I plan to write a much more thorough update about how things are going with the adoption. I may place it simply as a Facebook note so that only friends and family can see it. That way I can spill out more details than I would be comfortable sharing on this blog.

Well, for tonight I look forward to hopefully having a trainless evening.

Hopefully we will have some pictures up on the site soon, I need to get a chance to scan them in. They gave us a ton of good pictures at the last sonogram.

So, the next question everyone asks is, have you thought of any names?

And the answer is YES! We have.

Here are three of the names we currently like.

Jack Bauer Bristow
Jack Lincoln Bristow
Jack Harrison Bristow

And if you want to give us some feedback you can vote on the name you like best at:
http://www.babynamegenie.com/polls/56963

Enjoy!