Happy Birthday Luke

Today, our son Luke is thirty-four years old. You might remember that Luke is a parent himself to one of our two beautiful granddaughters. His lovely daughter, Kara, will be two months old this Sunday. When Kara was born, I wrote a guest post about Luke's birth for Parental Discretion Advised, a Parent's Magazine professional blog written by Luke's wife and Kara's mom, Bree. When I wrote my entry, I thought that the post was to be no longer than 200 words. However, my story was 619 words. Trying to stay in the lines while coloring. I pared this story down to 200 words. The following is the rest of the story minus the Parental Discretion Advised as I signed some e-document stating that my story would not be published elsewhere. The picture is from Luke's birth announcement.

Welcome to the World Baby Luke

Luke was not actually due to arrive until the first week of March, but on morning of February 14th on Valentine’s Day our second child decided to begin his grand entrance to the world. There were no clues or indicators that our second son was to arrive especially early. There was no early water breaking. There were no early contractions. Nor, did the doctor mention that little Luke would be arriving early.

The day before his birth, I felt a little tired and perhaps a little nauseous. I did feel well enough to pull his older brother around the neighborhood on a red, white, and blue sled. As I watched from a window his brother and dad make a snowman in the twilight, waves of nausea swept over my being. The night before Luke’s birth was uneventful so my husband, Miles went to work to his job as a high school chemistry teacher. Around eight o’clock in the morning, I began to feel ill again and then felt definite contractions. I called the high school. The principal’s secretary went personally to my husband’s classroom to tell him that the baby was coming and that he needed to leave right NOW. After taking our three year old son to a friend’s house, we were on our way to the hospital.

See Parental Discretion Advised for the actual birth story.

One of the delivery room nurses asked if we had chosen a name. She suggested if we did not have a name for our son born on Valentine’s Day that we could call him Valentino. When my husband Miles first saw our Valentine baby, he had a heart sticker on his forehead that apparently had been placed there by the nurses. We decided to forego the suggestion to name him Valentino; instead, we named our brand new son, Luke Byron. Luke was just a name that we liked. We choose his middle name after my father, Byron.

Although Luke was born three weeks early, he was a full-sized baby weighing 7 pounds and 6 ounces and was 21 inches long. Furthermore, his early arrival did not seem to slow down our Luke Byron. Today, he is almost six foot five and will be thirty-four this coming Valentine’s Day. Furthermore, he is a father himself to a brand new baby girl.