I almost feel bad for the wide range of feelings I go through on Noah's birthday. For the week leading up to his birthday .... I am always an emotional basket case. Just all those memories and feelings come rushing back.
Being told he wouldn't live .... while he still thrashed around inside me showing all signs of life.
How when I told them that ending my child's life because he wasn't perfect - wasn't an option. That I would take whatever time was given to me. How they scoffed at me as if I were making the worse decision of my life.
How I ended up in the hospital at the end of 32 weeks .... each step of the three day hospital stay leading to being rushed (by ambulance) to a hospital 2 hours away with a higher level NICU.... being told I wouldn't have him until the next day but upon arriving at the hospital and tests being run.... finding out the placenta (which was 100% Trisomy 16) was failing in it's small abnormal state, and that there was no waiting....
Being rushed into the O.R. .... scared.... terrified .... that this would be the moment when I would give birth, and my child would die.
It doesn't matter how hopeful I was, how much I turned things over to the higher powers ... no matter what I told myself about acceptance and love, and just taking whatever time I would be given with my extra special child.... no matter what....
...... the terror was still there. This was the moment, where my child could die.
All I had asked for was just to be able to hold my child, alive, once. To be able to touch his warm skin and hoped he would instinctively wrap his extremely tiny hand around my finger. To smell him. To pour into that moment as much love as I could.
Instead, my belly was cut open, they had to dig to get him out... and he was whisked away without a word from anyone. The O.R. was so silent. You could hear a pin drop. Or a scalpel ...
Regardless, this traumatized me, and to this day - it still bothers me how this group of doctors and medical staff completely disregarded the parents well being, emotional state, their needs ...... and without a word, would whisk away a child who they were told would surely die.
Because that's what they had all been told, I found out - about two years later ... they were all told that he would die. There was no hope.
Instead .... the doctors began to rush in, "He's so cute," "He's so handsome!" He was born at 3:45pm and my family (Mom, son, ex-husband and his mom) all got to see him around 7pm, they brought back Polaroids. But I had to wait until my legs woke up, and around 9pm I finally got to go see him.
I was wheeled back into the NICU ... taken past rooms upon rooms filled up with tiny incubators keeping tiny babies alive. Then I was wheeled beside my child's tiny little bed. He had multicolored wires keeping track o his pulse, his O2 stats, his heart rate, his breathing, etc and so on. He had a extremely tiny blood pressure cuff ... and he had IVs....
It's heartbreaking to see your child, so tiny ... unbelievably wondrously tiny .... hooked up to all these machines, happily beeping away.
Thoughts run through your head. Questions as simple as, can I touch him? I didn't even want to use the flash on my camera the first few days because it was so bright I didn't want to bother him or startle him.
He was so tiny. He was as long as a ruler (plus about an inch and three quarters) ... and as heavy as two cans of soda (plus four ounces) ... he was 1lb 12.2 oz and 13 3/4 inches.
Of course, he didn't feel the same as two soda cans, he felt like a feather.
The above picture was taken by my Uncle...
The two below by me... scared to use the flash
He was born on Friday ... and on Sunday morning, about 40 hours after his birth... much to everyone's surprise, even my own, he was pulled o the ventilator. The prior day (Saturday) we had been told that he was requiring very little help to breath. That Sunday morning, he had been breathing completely on his own and had been all night, so they decided to remove him from the vent.
This picture (above) was just after they removed the breathing tube. His eyes were open and he was gripping my finger. This was the FIRST TIME I GOT TO HOLD HIM.
That same day, I took this photo which is the one I use most often to try to explain how extremely small he was. This is HOPE a TY Beanie Baby ... HOPE came from the D.O.C.16 Foundation (Disorders of Chromosome 16) ... from Karen, the founder. This touched me so much. It was something that was put in the hospital bag right away.
I had to lighten it up, to see it well, but it distorted the picture a bit. He had no fat on him. He was 1lb 11oz this day. His lowest weight. When fat started to appear on him, it was these yellow pockets under his skin.
These are his ACTUAL SIZE prints ..... (they are sized correctly - they were smaller than my thumb)
Hands and Feet
Today ....... that little boy who beat all those odds turned 12 years old. TWELVE! His last year as a tween.
12 years of Noah. The top line is from birth through his first year. Then going down it's each year on his birthday. The middle being right before his 12th birthday ....
Superbowl was the following day .... and we celebrated by eating SEAHAWKS cupcakes after lunch!
Noah likes to do NOTHING on his birthday. He just wants to play games and hang out in his PJ's ... well Nana and Papa came to get him and took him to Toys R Us to pick out his birthday gift :)
After he got home .... we let him open up his gift from us...
And after dinner ..... he we had cake!!
And with that ....... we let him stay up as late as he wanted with the X-box. LOL.... I love him so much. He will forever be ...... THE BOY WHO LIVED!
