In the beginning

So, I guess I should start at the beginning.


I remember being pregnant, thinking "my son won't be one of "those" kids, my son will be perfect. He'll be super intelligent, kind, he'll mind his mother and father. Everyone will be so jealous of how well behaved he is.
He wouldn't have to be a star athlete but, I could live with that. He wouldn't have to be the brainiac either just as long as he was one or the other. Either way he'd be "perfect".

I imagine someone upstairs looking down and hysterically laughing at all my plans. All my judgements of other mothers and children that I'd so rashly made. Oh, they must have had a good laugh over me.

About five months in my pregnancy, I knew something was wrong. So, did my doctors. I remember at one point, I think I was somewhere between 24 weeks and 30, when they measured my uterus, I measured 42 weeks pregnant! My husband still jokes that I looked something like Kate, from John and Kate the TV show. I remember people asking me how many babies I was having.

I had polyhydramneous, which is extra water. In my case, it was one of the worse cases they'd ever seen. Apparently, no one told me this though, it means that there is a birth defect somewhere.

When my oldest was born, he was purple. Not purple like newborn baby purple, shortly after they cut the cord, and took him to be cleaned off, he turned purple. When they brought him back over to the table, where I was hemmaring (sp?), I noticed it but, was told that he was just cold.

An hour later, they couldn't get him to breathe and could not get a tube down his nose or esophagus to clear his airways!

Needless to say, something was really wrong. Later that evening they told me that my newborn would need surgery. NOTHING can prepare you to hear that, absolutely nothing.

Long story short, he had surgery. Only, it took place at a different hospital. One across town luckily and I had begged and begged my OBGYN to let me go extremely early so that I could go be with him. So, less than 36 hours after a surgery, where I apparently almost died from loss of blood, I was released with strict rules. Rules that I had no intention of following...I was going to be with my baby.

The day of the surgery, I was told that there were four risks involved with his surgery. One - brain damage due to where his nasal blockage was, Two - blindness, again due to were the blockage was, Three - anethestia and Four - that one and/or both blockages (both membrane and bone) could grow back and a repeat surgery would be needed.

The surgery took ok and he came out of it ok. I remember going to the NICU and asking a nurse if that was my baby! I'd never seen him without tubes, wires and tape all over his face and mouth. He was beautiful. We took him home nine days after he was born with high hopes.