Family: My Son

Today marks 6 years of having our first and so far only son in our family. He is our middle child and full of spunk. Of the three children his pregnancy was the most difficult. However difficult it was I always had a reassuring feeling that everything was going to be OK. At nine weeks I threatened miscarriage and after that Dr appointment was told that my parents' (my husband, daughter, and I were living with them at that time) house was on fire. So much for not stressing like the Dr had said to do. Turned out it wasn't my parents' house but the neighbor's house, which was still stressful for us because they were like family to us. Then when we went to see what we were going to have the ultrasound technician told us that there was something wrong with him. He had a clubfoot. We didn't know what that meant and were nervous about it. The specialist didn't calm our fears, but was able to tell us that he only had one foot clubbed and everything else looked fine. I thought all was OK but was still uneasy and kept thinking "I'm going to go to the OB and not go home but to the hospital from the office." I told my family this and they reassured me it was normal pregnant brain. Well at 32 weeks I went to the OB with my oldest daughter, almost 2 at the time, and told them I thought that my water had broke. A little random to not "know" that your water had broken or not, but with my daughter it had and it wasn't the gush like everyone hears about so I knew it was possible. They checked me and my fluids were so low they sent me to the hospital from the Dr's office. My concern was confirmed, but I still KNEW everything would be fine. I was scared because I had my daughter and my parents were out of the country, luckily my sister lives in town and she got my daughter from the hospital and my husband met me in the triage. I didn't have my son that day like we all thought. I was checked into the hospital and stayed for three weeks. However during those three weeks my husband was going to be gone for two of them to do a training for the Army Reserves. He flew out to do the training, but when he was gone the Dr told me that if my son's lungs were developed enough they would do the c-section then. I asked if they would wait until my husband's time away was done and the Dr said, "No." I wasn't going to have my first major surgery and deliver our first son without my husband near so he was called and was able to come home from the training. I still didn't deliver until my husband's two weeks of training would have been up, but he was there and it helped. My so was born 5 weeks premature and with his clubfoot. He stayed in the NICU for 10 days and soon after he came home he got his foot treated . Fast forward to my son being almost 2 and we are saying goodbye to my husband as he goes overseas to Kuwait. We knew he would be sent overseas after 9/11 happened we just didn't know when or even where exactly. When his unit was getting ready to deploy I was terrified of my husband going to Iraq, I kept having dreams of him getting blown up at a checkpoint. The unit had two places to go overseas, one Iraq and one Kuwait. We were blessed my husband went to Kuwait. While gone some of my husband's unit came home, I was confused about it because they were names I didn't know. I found out that they were stationed in Iraq and they had gone to the 2 week training my husband came home from. Had he stayed for those 2 weeks he would have been deployed when our son turned a year, and that year was a year jamm packed with trajedy. We first found out my son's allergy to Codine when the surgeon came out and told us that he had stopped breathing on his own during the simple surgery, luckily he had a breathing tube. My sister and my husband's mother both had a form of cancer they were diagnosed with that same year. Then a cousin of mine died in a freak accident going home to her family after visiting my sister with cancer. Then during my son's 1st birthday my grandfather went into the hospital and didn't go home. Then another cousin of mine died of a brain cancerous tumor. So needless to say my son putting me into the hospital for three weeks was a blessing because it kept my husband from going to one of the scariest places on earth, to me at the time, during a year time when I needed his support.