13 years ago today

Today, I am officially the mother of a teenager. The years have flown by and I am a bit teary eyed that she has grown up, but she is a loving, sensitive, fun, bright young lady and am proud to call her my daughter. Let's revisit that day 13 years ago:

My due date was Feb 23, 1996. The day, however was Jan 30 (Tuesday) and I had my normal doctor's appointment at 11:30am. I was feeling just fine. I worked downtown at the time, close enough to walk to my doctor's appointment. The weather that day was nice, of course I had to wear my winter coat, but no snow or such that would hinder me from walking to the appointment as usual. When I got there they checked my blood pressure and I had to take a urine test. The normal routine. My blood pressure was a bit high, which it had been on previous visits, but I just had to lay on my left side and they would take it again and it would be ok. Today however, they could not get my blood pressure down. Also, my urine test had protein in it, so my doctor said I needed to go to the hospital so they can run more tests. He really didn't let on that anything was wrong, except the fact that he said I should call my husband and have him come to the hospital as well, "just so he could be with me". Now you would have thought that would have sent alarms up and it would have dawned on me that something was really wrong, but it didn't. I called Kelley's work, which they were conveniently downtown as well, and told them to get hold of Kelley and meet me at the hospital. Before I left the doctor's office, the doctor wanted to do an ultrasound to see the position of the baby. He thought it might be breach so he wanted to make sure. Yes, in fact the baby was breach. Once again you would have thought the doctor wanting to see if the baby was breach would make me wonder if something was up….alas it didn't.

Grant Hospital was right across the street from my doctors office, so you guessed it, I walked to the hospital. Kelley met me there and they drew blood for more tests. It was now about 2:00pm when the nurse came into the room and said my tests were "atypical" and I would be having the baby in about an hour. I had preeclampsia and the only way for me to get better was to get the baby out. Kelley and I just looked at each other and said together, "An hour!!". "No, I can't have the baby now, we aren't ready. I have my shower tonight". Of course, they just laughed and left the room. But you have to understand, I wanted to go to my shower. I had another shower schedule that the people at work gave me, but we had to cancel that because of a snow storm a few weeks earlier. So my Church was having a shower for me on this night and now I couldn't go to that!! My doctor came and asked me if I wanted an epidural or a spinal. I would be having a Cesarean section since the baby was breach. As I was pondering what to have, the anesthesiologist decided I would be put all the way under because my platelet's were so low. An inadequate number of platelets leads to uncontrolled bleeding. My doctor was very upset by the fact that I had to be put under, but he couldn't argue with the anesthesiologist. Kelley and I were scared as well, but what could we do?

Kelley was in the operating room with me and watched our baby being born at 3:30pm. The doctor lifted the baby out and said, "She is peeing!". Kelley said, "What did you say?" He then repeated it and Kelley was just glowing as our baby girl, Madison, was the first girl in a very long time in his family. She was 5 1/2 lbs, 18 inches long. I was brought out of the anesthesia, but I was very sick for a couple of days and couldn't completely love on my baby, as my platelets continued to drop. They would eventually bottom out and then start coming back up. Kelley fed Madison himself since I was unable to. My mom and sister still went to my shower the night she was born (after they saw her at the hospital) and of course my mom was all smiles as she had her first grandchild!! She was the smallest baby in the nursery so the nurses just loved on her so much. They couldn't get enough of her, which was great since I was feeling so bad and couldn't love on her myself. I slept most of the time. Eventually I was on the upswing and started feeling better. Holding my child (and actually aware of it) was the best feeling I have ever felt in my life. I wanted this to last forever!

Kelley had a lot of work to do, by himself before I got home. My mom brought over all my shower gifts and now Kelley had to wash everything so Madison could at least wear something home and have blankets. He had to get the car seat out of the box and fitted into the car. The crib was put together but had no bedding, so he had to see to that. We also had just gotten a puppy the month before (what were we thinking?) and still had to deal with "puppiness" in the midst of a new baby. What a trooper! We came home after four days and it has been a whirlwind ever since.

Thank you Madison for lighting up our lives!!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!!