The Jones Family

At 20 weeks, 6 days we learned that our little boy would be born with medical issues. The doctors told us the outcome for our child would be grim, but we remained faithful that he would be born perfectly fine. And even if he was born with issues, we knew that we would love him unconditionally.My pregnancy from then on was considered high risk, and my husband and I began the life of going to the hospital twice a week for doctor appointments. Every week the doctors would give me a sonogram to see if our little boy's health had improved. For several weeks, our situation was "wait and see."Because of the medical issues, our doctors recommended that we deliver the baby at 37 weeks, instead of the regular 40 weeks. We were prepared to do that—but God had other plans.On July 21, at 36 weeks and 2 days, our precious baby Christopher Louis Jones Jr. was born. He came into the world blue and not breathing. After resuscitation and having a breathing tube inserted in him, he was immediately transferred to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU). After multiple tests, exams and doctor consultations, it was determined that our son was a very, very sick baby. Due to his medical conditions, the doctors were surprised that he had lived beyond 36 hours. Eventually we learned that in order for him to live, he would need to be connected to a ventilator, a feeding tube and a suction machine for the rest of his life. The doctors also made it clear that, even if he were connected to these machines, he could still die.Based off of this information, we knew that his quality of life would be poor. After carefully considering our options, we decided it was in our son’s best interest to remove the ventilator and let him go peacefully to live with Jesus. On Friday, July 31, at 7 pm, with our permission, the doctors carefully placed our son in my arms and took his breathing tube out as he peacefully passed away. We knew that heaven was a better place for him, as there are no ventilators, tubes, machines, X-rays or needle pricks there. And the crawl space is infinite for a little boy who is on the move!In the short time since our son passed away we donated his brain, brain stem, heart and part of his lungs to research. I donated all of my breast milk to the Mothers Milk Bank of Ohio, which serves seven different NICUs across three states. People can make a donation in our baby's memory to the Cincinnati Children's NICU; donations will help the families of NICU babies as well as the babies themselves. We also started the Angel Baby Network, a national support organization that helps families as they walk through the passing of their child. And we have met with the Cincinnati Health Department Fetal and Infant Mortality Review program to help them improve the care that is provided to families across the region when they have babies. We do not believe that this is all God has in store for us.If we had a choice between our son dying and helping a lot of other people or us being able to bring him home, we would have chosen the latter. But God has us in our situation for a reason. We may not completely understand it, but we will make sure that we make the best of what happened and that our son’s purpose of helping others is fulfilled. We will always love our little boy, and he will always be our champion.Contributed by Danielle Jones       Christopher Jones, Sr. and Danielle Jones, parents of Christopher Louis Jones, Jr. aka “Junior"