Got Blood?

If you are not a member of a church family, you need to read this!!!

The doctor told us that the babies at some point may have to have a blood transfusion (or two). Don't be alarmed this is very common. Babies don't make a lot of blood and they are constantly drawing blood for testing. Quick fact - babies this size only have about 3 oz off blood in their bodies right now (that is 1/4 of a can of coke). The doctor suggested we attempt to find our own donors so that we can be confident that the blood is high quality. He did not say that normal blood from a bank is not good - it is just more comforting to know who your donor is - if possible. Sure no problem we told him. What are the blood types? Ellie O Negative and Evan and Charlotte are A negative. Good this should be easy - I'm A neg and Jenn is O neg. Problem #1 - Jenn just had surgery she can't give for 8 weeks - one option down. I quickly went down to the blood center (Life South of Gainesville) got set up and the donor lady started an assessment. BP good - Hemoglobin good. Then she heard me cough - bad. I was quickly disqualified for having a minor chest cold - 2nd option down. So - two options down but we are not out. Another quick fact 85% of Americans have positive blood - not negative - Thanks can we make this any harder. Next we turned to family. Only matches were Louis (my brother) A Neg. And Lisa (Jenn's sister) A Neg. Still no O Neg. Another quick fact - all we needed was one O neg donor - because O neg is called the universal donor and would match with all three. Time is ticking and still no hard core solution.
We have been offered just about everything you could image from family, friends and church members (which are both family and friends). Things like food, house cleaning, grocery shopping, driving, you get the picture. We had gotten an e-mail just a few days ago from one of our Sunday school classmates that stressed she was not kidding about offering to help - oh yeah! We called her and with out much explanation asked her about her blood type - can't remember what it was - but no match. This then led us to reach out to the rest of our Sunday school class - no immediate matches. The email was then spread throughout our church members and even through out the county. We were getting several responses from all over the place - mostly A neg but little to no O neg. E-mails continued to be passed around for a couple of hours and then we got a couple matches from some of our close church members. It helped that this was all being done on a Wednesday night (church night).
So our current question of the past 32 hrs Got Blood? Has been answered. A negs - covered. O neg covered - Hopefully by Sunday all the blood will be ready - if needed.

Jenn and I want to say a special thank you to everyone that took part in this search, offered to donate, and are going to be donors. I could not imagine what our situation would have been like if we did not have a loving church to turn to. Thank you Hazel Creek Baptist!!!

***If you are not a active blood donor, I encourage you to do so. Contact your local Red Cross for locations to be a donor***