Dear Owen,
Happy Birthday. A long time ago, I prayed for a little baby. When you were 6 weeks and 6 days old, I found out I had 2 little beans furiously growing inside of me. I saw the flicker of your heartbeat. I was scared and excited. When you were 16 weeks old I found out you were a boy. I have to admit, I was SURE you were a girl, but its funny because all of a sudden I loved powder blue:-) Every night, before I fell asleep I would pray that God would help me have a safe full term pregnancy. Every morning before I pulled out of my garage, I prayed again for a healthy pregnancy, and a safe trip to work, and for God to protect all of my family and keep them here with me.
You were Baby Boy A, first in line to get out, and man did you want out! I started to feel you around 18 weeks flipping and turning, like what a fish looks like out of water . . . . that is what it felt like to me. On Sept 17th when you were just 20 weeks old, I found out how bad you wanted out! I remember so clearly being told that I was in labor and that you were on your way out. . . I held it together until they wheeled me into my room on the high risk wing of Labor and Delivery. I remember being told that you probably had an infection and that if that was true which it probably was, they couldn't stop my labor, because then both of us would be in jeapordy, and that I needed to be prepared that you were probably going to die. While the doctor was telling me this you were kicking angrily as if to remind me of the lives I so precariously held . . . . just barely . . . inside of me. I thought, who is this evil person telling me to just give up . . . what kind of mother could just say "well I did my best, but oh well" . . . but I know she was just doing her job and telling me the harsh reality of the situation. As I absorbed this information, I thought how strange that my tears were falling up into my hair because I was in a postition I would come to know very well (inverted with my head down and my feet up, a modified headstand if you will:-). We were told our options and I remember the doctor saying that there were worse things than death . . . . . she's wrong. I looked up to the ceiling and I asked God what to do. Was I intervening by having the cerclage, was I supposed to just give up? For me that was never an option, the second I saw that pink line, I was your mother . . . . nobody loves you more than me, and I was the only one who could protect you then. So I said to God, "I promise to do whatever I can using modern medicine and prayer, I know in my heart I am making the right decision and I will accept whatever it is that you have in store for our family." And off to the O.R. we went. . . . . well after a very embarrassing surgery we held on, the three of us, for 4 and a half more weeks. I kept looking at pictures of head circumfrences at 21 weeks versus 24 weeks and just willing all of us to hold on at least until you were "viable" enough for the doctors to even consider saving. "The edge of viability" . . . we just made it.
The first time I saw you I was shocked. You were so impossibly small. You were so skinny, your chin was pointy and you had no lips just a line for your mouth. I could see through your skin and see all of your vascular structure underneath. Your ears were huge and very low on your head. . . . you hadn't finished developing yet. For the longest time I thought you had no nipples. . . . but it was just to early to see them:-) You didn't even have little bum cheeks, just a little brown dot! I could hardly see you underneath all of the tubes and wires. Your night nurse Katie was so nice. She made me feel like everything was going to be alright. She encouraged me to touch you, I couldn't believe they would let me stick my germy hands inside your "womb". I can't even describe how light you were. Your skin was tacky because of the humidity in your incubator helping you adjust to room air. My belly still looked pregnant and I kept expecting to feel you kick . . . it took a few days to really realize that you were out and the pregnancy was over. I couldn't see your eyes because you had a little "sleep" mask on to protect your eyes from the "bili" lights helping you flush out the excess bilirubin that your tiny liver couldn't process. Your odds were not good, about 50% chance survival rate according to statistics. Being as fragile as you were, the next 7 and then 30 days would tell us a lot about how you fared during your delivery and after. Would you be able to come off the ventilator and your lungs be able to breathe on their own, would you get a hemmorage in your brain, would you get an infection, would you recover from your infection that you were born with, would your heart fix itself, would your intestines perforate, would your eyes be able to take all the life saving oxygen and still see me one day? All these crazy questions that you shouldn't have to worry about during your third trimester, or first three months of life.
Over the first 3 months of your life I got to know the inner workings of the NICU very well. I know forever the last four digits of your medical record were 4577 (Liam was 4578). I know the "A's and B's" of prematurity. I remember all of your little milestones. I was always so proud of you. When you hit 1000 grams, 2 lbs, then 3, then 4, 5, 6 . . . . I remember when after 7 and a half weeks you took your first real breaths (not including that crazy time when they extubated you on like day 2 or something:-)) I will never again take for granted the involuntary muscles and brain connections associated with breathing. Every breathe is amazing. I remember how croaky your voice was, but it was the first time I had heard it, you had the hiccups and it sounded like a bullfrog. The first time I held you over a month after you were born. How when you were able to wear clothes finally, the preemie size hung off you like an XXL t-shirt. You gave me a million scares, none which compare to the night after your heart surgery when I was touching your head and I could feel your breathe in your head and it was like creaky . . . . I don't know how else to describe it. I called your nurse Nilsa over and right away she felt it too . . . and then you just went down. It was my first experience with the "code" team. I was so scared. . . I was scared speechless. I just sat there next to Liam deleting emails so that I wouldn't freak out and get kicked out of the pod. It wasn't going well, but you had the best team fighting with you. . . . at one point while they were giving you chest compressions and breathing and beating your heart for you, you reached your little hand straight up and your whole arm was blue. Then they asked us to step out, your lungs had collapsed and they were going to try to open them back up with nitrogen (or something . . hee hee, I guess some of it fades), your Daddy and I sat in the waiting room clutching each other not talking until a nurse came and got us and she said they got you back and you were pink and breathing (with a new high frequency ventilator designed to give you tons of teeny tiny little breathes instead of normal size ones), we went back there and you were wide awake and ANGRY and red! I had never been so happy, I was crying tears of relief. They told me I could touch you, but I wasn't about to put my snotty germ infested hands on you. I was just so glad that you were alive. . . . It was always like that . . . . up and down, up and down. You would be good, and Liam would be bad, and then the opposite. It was so hard to ever be happy or excited because usually one of you was not doing well. Thanks to you and your brother I have a head full of white and grey hairs (at least you didn't give me any worry lines!).
Everyone says life is a miracle, but how many people really really get to see how miraculous it truly is. Once you create life, from the moment of conception that life is FIGHTING to grow and thrive, it wants to SURVIVE, its whole being is focused on maturing for survival. I'm not articulate enough to get my thoughts on paper, but life, once created, even in the most fragile state is extremely difficult to extinguish because you are not dealing with a cut flower, you are dealing with an explosion of light, and power, and a soul that is entitled the chance to fight (That is the one reason as soon as we were offered the cerclage we took it, because I could never make the choice to end lives that were trying so hard to grow and live). For that matter, the field of neonatology is truly God's work. To take care and fight along side the tiniest, most fragile, sometimes sickest new lives and NEVER give up, regardless of the circumstance I always saw resolve, critical thinking, and BELIEF that all those babies were going to MAKE it. Nobody ever looked at us and said "you might not take them home" and I NEVER got the feeling that anything but success was expected.
The day we brought you home was such a happy day. I was scared, and because of the oxygen I kind of felt like you were a little bomb waiting to explode at the first spark:-) You were so little, but you looked so big to us. We got you home, and had no idea what to do, so we just watched you sleep and then held you and fed you little bits at a time. It was the BEST ever. And you started to thrive. You gained weight and height in leaps and bounds.
From the day we brought you home until today has felt like the blink of an eye. I can't believe how much you've grown. I can't believe all the things you can do. I can't believe all of what is behind us, and all that lies ahead. Every night before I go to bed I say thank you to God for giving me you. I cannot IMAGINE not having you here, you have changed me completely, and I am so glad. Things did not happen like I thought they would and I will always miss Liam and wonder what it would have been like to have both of you here with me, but in reality I shouldn't have gotten either of you but I did, and Liam is here with all of us, I see him every day in your sleeping face.
Owen, the word miracle does not even begin to describe you. You are amazing, you are freakishly strong, you are fickle with your food, and generous with your smiles. You sleep like an Angel, you snore like a man, and you laugh at the silliest things. Your determination leaves me speechless, and your fearlessness scares the crap out of me. I love you so much it brings me to my knees, I love you so much I am scared that I'll lose you. I am going to try my hardest not to smother you with my love, and to let you live, and make mistakes, and learn the "hard way" when appropriate. I will let you play football (just not QB, or wide receiver or any position that doesn't see the hit coming from some beast that outweighs them 3 to 1) once you get to highschool.
My baby, that saying "The World is Your Oyster" is true, anything you want you can achieve, you can be anything you want to be, I will be your biggest cheerleader. I cherish the way you are today, and cannot wait to see who you become, who you will love, what will be important to you, what your hobbies will be.
Happy Birthday little man, I love you now and always.
Love,
Mom
