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Three Years! Another Anniversary!! I Almost Forgot!
I almost forgot what today was!! It's my blog anniversary!! Daily Smiles has been up and running for three years.
Honestly I love all the friendships I've made put here. The support is priceless. I don't know what I'd do without you all!
Here's my very first post.
Today is day one. My first post. It's pretty primitive compared to what's out there, but it is a start.Let me introduce ourselves,I'm Stephanie and my husbands name is Peter, then there is Aniela,22,
Olivia,11, Sophia, 9, Bella,7, Andrew,5, and our daughter Emilia Faith
who was born on October 22,2008,with Down Syndrome. That day turned out
to be the happiest
day of my life, but the months before her birth were far from happy. On
May 21,2008 I went for a level 2 ultrasound, for no other reason than
my "advanced" age (39). I just wanted to get in, get out and get on with
my perfectly normal pregnancy. This was my fifth baby, and if there was
one thing I could do it was have healthy babies. Well the technician came in and did her thing,now we had to wait for the doctor. We didn't wait long, great a quick acquittal and we're out of here.Wrong. Seems the baby had an echogenic
bowel. That is when the bowels appear bright white on the
ultrasound.The only part of the baby that is supposed to show up white
is bone ,everything else is gray or black.It's not a huge issue the
doctor assured me, but it is a soft marker. "A soft marker for what"? I
asked. "Down Syndrome" the doctor replied. The feelings that immediately
came over me were fear,I can't handle a special needs baby, our lives
are basically over, doubt, how will we ever be happy again, guilt, what
have I done! Were we greedy to want just one more baby? Anger, lots and
lots of anger. Who is this guy? How can he sit there and tell me I could
be having a baby with DS. Then of course
came the mother of all questions from the doctor. "What do you want to
do with this pregnancy"? Well, let me think about that,for starters how
about I walk out of here the same way I walked in-PREGNANT ! To say I
freaked out completely would be the understatement of the year, no the
century. I even got the bright idea to take the AFP
quad test. Bad idea, it came back positive. Within 2 days my odds of a
healthy baby went from 1/75 to 1/2 . Things were not looking good.I took
a crash DS course on the Internet
to try to educate myself as much as possible. The good and the bad. We
gathered the kids and told them as gently as possible that most likely
our new baby would be born with DS. I had this beautiful image in my head that after we told them there would be a few tears , then immediate acceptance
and a group hug. Wrong again. What there was, was loud wailing, fears
of losing friends, fear of the baby looking different .Every one ran off
crying and slamming doors. My husband Peter and I sat there with our
mouths hanging open.Who were those kids, that's not how we are raising
our children. Then my husband assured me, to give them time and they
will come around . The first one on the scene was Bella, and what did
this little sweet thing say? "we'll just love her".One by one they came
around, and with the incredible support of friends and family we managed
to get through the next 4 months of my pregnancy.It wasn't easy, I had
at least one meltdown a day. There were days that I just wanted to walk
away from it all. Doubt took over many times."I can't do this ",was how I
began every prayer.Doctors visits, that in the past had always been
something I looked forward to became stressful. Doctors were always too
willing to remind me that 75% of "theses babies" die in utero, or (and this was one of my favorites) "the baby looks great, good heart, good measurements, but something catastrophic
could still happen". Isn't that nice! But we went on, what else could
we do.Finally it was October 21, my last doctors appointment, my due
date was Oct 24, done with these stressful visits. Wrong yet again. My
doctor suggested one last ultrasound since it had been a month since my
last one. Fine, I'm 3 days away from due date, what could possibly go
wrong. Well, after the ultrasound the doctor had a strange look on her
face,"you have no amniotic fluid left, did your water break?" Ok,
not to sound like a complete idiot but can your water break and you not
realize it? Apparently so, I guess I had a slow leak. This was followed
by, "we need to get you to the hospital and induced immediately". Since
I had not had an ultrasound in a month and was unaware that my water
broke, there was no way of knowing how long the baby was without the
fluid.Great. The doctor didn't want me to go home at all, but what about
the other kids in school, my husband, I couldn't just call him from the
hospital. I got the OK to go home and take care of things but make it
quick. I had my ultimate meltdown in the car on the way home. This time I
started my prayer, not with the words "I can't do this", but with the
words, "I am not losing this baby now, no way,You brought us this far we
are going all the way"!!!!! On October 22, at exactly 5pm Emilia Faith
arrived.The second she was placed in my arms I felt all the stress and
fears and doubts just fall away, replaced with such complete happiness
and pure joy and peace.
I have never felt the presence of God
stronger than at that moment. This has been an extremely long post, but
when I found out that Emilia most likely would be born with DS,
I searched online for hope. I had no place else to turn. The doctors
don't tell you things will be OK.They don't tell you, sure there is a
very likely chance of some serious health issues and this is going to be
the most challenging time of your life, but hang in there,have
faith,whatever the out come, this is your baby,the one God picked
especially for you.It's not a mistake,or a burden,it's a blessing. If I
can be a comfort to someone ,who is where I was just a few months
ago,that's great.I found a lot of comfort and support reading about
families with children who have DS,and that life goes on and it goes on beautifully.
Yes, I have to leave a link to Carina's Giveaway!! Click HERE! :)
1 comment:
Steph, I had never read this. You had me in tears there at the end. Just beautiful, dear friend. Happy blogaversary!!! (How the heck is that supposed to be spelled?)
Oh, and hey- betcha never thought Olga's family would be on the plane on the way to meet her for your blog anniversary gift this year!!!!!
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