Things you might not know.... (sorry it's so long)

I have three kids. They are all spread out in age and don't have a huge amount in common, other than the fact that they are all my kids. Having the kids was the best thing I have ever accomplished, personally. But along the way there were bumps in the road and things that scared me. While everything has worked out just fine, I thought I would share a little....

ADAM
I found out I was pregnant with Cory at age 15 and he came into the world shortly after I turned 16. That would be enough of a fright for just about anyone who has no job, no life experience, no business having a baby... but that pregnancy was the easiest I ever had. I don't ever remember being sick. I was excited to have him, not about the circumstances, but about him. I used to lay on my bed and talk to him and put my headphones on my belly. I tried my hardest to be careful with him and do what I was supposed to do to take care of him. I had made the decision early on not to circumcise him and that I would breastfeed. I read articles about child development and considered all my options. Reading and making decisions about my baby to be were easy because it was abstract. There was no baby to mess up yet. He came into the world as a 8 lb 6 oz strawberry blond, blue eyed angel. From the second I laid my eyes on him, my heart hurt with the love I had for him. But love alone can't make a good parent. He started having trouble with his digestion really early on. I had to stop breastfeeding, we switched formulas, and had to call the paramedics when he inhaled his own projectile vomit. I was scared. I was certain I couldn't do it. One evening, my friend from across the street came over to meet him. I had been sitting in the chair holding him on my shoulderand he was asleep. I leaned forward to show her his face, but he didn't stir. A few minutes later, I gently bounced him in my hands to see if she could see his beautiful eyes. He didn't stir. Determined, I bounced a little more.... we couldn't wake him up. As we rushed to the hospital, my teenage mind was fixated on a kitten that had died on me the previous summer. I kept saying, wailing, moaning... "I can't even keep a cat alive." My mother told me to shut up, he was going to be fine. The doctors ran tests. One of the tests involved barium (that stuff is nasty). They had to remove the barium from his stomach with a tube up his nose... I had to leave the room, go down the hall to keep from hurting the nurse... because I knew she had to do it and I had to let her. The next morning he went to surgery.. my baby, four weeks old... they sliced his belly open, just a little, but really how can it be just a little at four weeks, to fix his pyloric stenosis... (that's affects the tube leading out of the stomach). They told me it was most common in first born males. I held him after surgery, aimed the oxygen at his nose. My parents went home. I was alone with him. Those were the minutes, hours, days that I knew I couldn't buckle.. I couldn't be weak and fail. I had to do the best I had in me to make it good for him. We'll both tell you I haven't been perfect, but everything I have ever done regarding him has been affected by how scared I was in those minutes, hours, days.

DANIEL
Being older, married, with more experience helped in being able to share my joy with others about this pregnancy, but it was by far and away the most miserable physically. I was sick as a dog. So sick I tore my esophagus from puking. But when he was born, I had that same heartache of love. That your chest nearly explodes with it just by looking at them. I knew pretty early on that something with Daniel was different. He slept alot more than Cory ever did. He was so laid back, but he hated riding in the car. He preferred being left alone in his bed instead of being rocked to sleep. As he got older, his eccentricities became more noticeable... he's more emotional, more skittish, more singleminded about his interests. But he has always been my boy. He tells me I give the warmest hugs. He always wants to smell my hair. (Cory always twirled it). He laughs the biggest, deepest, most sincere laughs. But as time passes at school his peers have bypassed him in some of the more finely tuned social skills. He's forgotten his milk money, a friend sat somewhere different, the noise was too much... so he freezes. As a family, we are struggling with how to make it all better. My husband has found it difficult to be ok with calling it what it is. Asperger's. From some viewpoints, it may seem like he is being willful or trying to get out of things. Sometimes he might be. But other times he just can't process things the way average people do. We've made the decision not to tell him about the specifics. At his age, it is too much information. When he is older, we will, but for now he is just a boy who needs a little extra sometimes. The response I have gotten when I have told people has varied. The most stunning response to me is the sympathetic look or the assumption that it must be difficult. My boy hasn't changed. He is my boy... freckles, sweet, warm hug loving, kind to people, doe-eyed, tender hearted.... The diagnosis only helps me help him in school. It makes other people aware of how to have interactions with him that will benefit them both. It's just a different way of being... not a catastrophe. And quite frankly, I like him this way. I don't who he would be without it, but I know I couldn't love him more.

AURELIA
She was the baby I didn't think I was going to have. I had wanted a girl the first two times, I was 29, we'd tried for a while to have another. I had started college believing it wasn't going to happen again. But then at the end of the first semester there was that familiar feeling and BAM... we were expecting. I was sick while I was pregnant with her too, but not nearly as much as with Daniel. I craved nasty, greasy double cheeseburgers from the revolting Mickey D's. The slew of tests that pregnant women endure these days went well. Until they called me at home to tell me that my chance of having a baby with Down's syndrome was significantly elevated (according to one of the tests). I was told I had several options: I could end the pregnancy, have an amniocentisis that might hurt the baby, or have measurements taken by ultrasound. Now, my husband and I immediately agreed there would be no ending the pregnancy and amnio was too risky just to know something that couldn't be changed. So I had the ultrasound the following day ( I already had an appt). The hours between the call and the ultrasound were filled with fear, anxiety, endless thoughts of not if, but how, I would be a good mother for a special needs child. Saying it and thinking it are easy, doing it is REAL... I think my major concerns weren't if she could ever live on her own, spell her name, or be accepted by small-minded people, but if she would have heart problems that are associated with Down's. I was terrified. But the ultrasound was done and all the measurements indicated she would be fine. Then my labor was induced a week before her due date. Not because of complications, but because my husband worked for a company that kept saying he was going to be out of town for that week for training. The guilt I had over that inducement has only increased over the years... especially since he didn't ever get sent out of town. She was born facing the ceiling, instead of the ground, so her face was dragged across my pelvic bones and you can still see a mark above her lip and on her forehead. I worry that she will hate those marks. She was tiny. 6 1/2 lbs when her brothers were both over 8 lbs. She was the only baby who had a nursery ready when she came home. I decorated and cleaned and organized.... She had to go back to the hospital several times to get her foot jabbed because she was jaundiced. I nearly fainted. She wasn't very old when we became concerned about a ridge along the top of her skull. She had to have a scan of her skull to see if her fontanella was fusing too soon. The first time she went (she has always been a firecracker) she refused to lay still, because she couldn't get her finger in her mouth... she chews her pointer finger. She crooks it and shoves it in her mouth and you can hear her chew it. It is so gross. So they scheduled another time to come back, drug her, scan her head and be done. They gave that tiny, tiny girl the drugs.. twenty minutes later she was still not down for the count. It did finally kick in enough that they could do the scan... but she was never sedated... she couldn't stand being strapped in. My beautiful, fiery red headed, brown eyed sweetpea was fine on all counts.

This entry is most likely the longest I have ever had, but I had so much to share... I didn't even get it all in. Really I just wanted to vent a little... but I can't remember why...