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| Let's not even comment about how long it's been.  Apparently I haven't taken very many pictures of my children lately either. Here are a couple from a trip to the nature center over a month ago.  
Nathan likes to wear hats. We thought he looked cute in this one.  
Zach spent one morning recently visiting the kindergarten class he'll attend this fall.  It was a kids only event. I worried that he wouldn't be OK with staying there when he didn't know anyone. (Although he HAD seen the room and met the teacher on parent's information night.) I walked him in and helped him hang up his jacket. He look around and said, "All right mom you can leave now." Here he is after class with the picture he made and a ballon. 
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| Ha. Well here it is as promised. I don't know that it's a thousand words...but it is my thoughts on our first year with Nathan.
You did notice I didn't promise it in a TIMELY manner didn't you? Unless I'm at work I never promise anything in a timely manner anymore.  (See the third from the last paragraph below.  )
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It’s typical among my group of friends to repost their birth story on our children’s birthdays. I feel like Nathan’s biggest story has really been his first year of life.
When I replay the day Nathan was born in my head I don’t think so much about the details of the labor and delivery. What is burned into my brain are those moments when Nathan’s pediatrician came into my hospital room and told us that Nathan had at least one serious birth defect. However, that’s not the movie I’ve played in my head for the past year.
My mind keeps going back to later that night. Nathan had already “climbed” aboard the baby bus (which was what they call the ambulance that handles the transfer of babies to the larger hospital with the NICU). Kelly had gone home to spend some time with our big boy and try and get some rest. I was left in my room, trying to get some sleep, which I knew I was going to need, and wondering and worrying about my baby. The transport team had left a picture of Nathan with me. I held that picture and tried to process the events of the day. It wasn’t, of course, anywhere near how I had pictured it would be. You never “expect” that something will be wrong with your baby. You know that happens to others, and you know that there are a million things which can go wrong, but unless you’ve had some prior information about problems with the baby, you go into the hospital imagining how your little family is going to react after the one you’ve been waiting for, for nine months is actually there, in your arms. You think about all the normal things you’ll do and how special you want to make sure it is.
I’m a planner. I write the stories in my head and then do the things I need to do to make the story a reality. I like to think I’m a realistic planner. Of course those stories don’t always turn out as first written, but my goal is to be someone who handles life’s rewrites well. And Nathan’s arrival was the biggest rewrite I’ve experienced to date. I lay there in my bed, clutching Nathan’s picture and thinking how completely out of my control everything was. I’d had to let my baby go off with someone else. I knew that they were taking the absolutely best care of him that they could, but there were so many questions. So many blanks that I didn’t know how to do a rewrite. “What should we do now? What came next? How long would it be until I could hold my baby again? Why did this happen to us? How were we going to be able to deal with it all?” So many questions were swirling around in my mind.
In between catnaps I began to sort those questions into categories. Ones I could answer, ones we would have to wait for the answers for, and ones that didn’t really matter. The first ones to go under the category of “didn’t really matter” were all the ones that dealt with the “why did this happen to us” “what did we do to deserve this” “why couldn’t my baby just have been born without any problems”. I decided that these were counterproductive issues that I didn’t have the time or energy to spend thinking about. I wasn’t ever going to get answers to them. Things were the way they were. No amount of wishing or wondering “why” was going to change that. I was going to need all of my resources to get us through this. I had none to waste on pointless issues.
There were many questions that went into the “we’ll have to wait for the answers to” category. It was important to keep track of those questions because I would need to pull them out one at a time to discuss with Nathan’s medical team. However, for the most part I couldn’t waste time and resources on trying to answer those questions either: patience was what was needed there. Questions about what might be necessary in the future: all of those “what if” questions were also areas where I didn’t need to waste time and resources.
So then I was left with questions that fit into the “ones I could write the answers for” And really there was only one big question there. The only thing left for me to be in charge of was: “How were WE going to handle all of this?” That was the thing that I had control of here. I was the one that would determine how our family would handle whatever the future held. Not that we wouldn’t do it together, and that I wouldn’t need help, but I could set the tone. I had total control over my outlook and attitude and as one of the leaders of our family unit had influence over the attitudes of everyone else.
So how did I want to handle this??? I began with the end in mind. I thought, “A year from now what do I want to be able to look back and be able to say about the way we handled the year?” I came up with five things that I had control over.
1. I don’t want us to be in a constant state of worry about the future. Deal with today. Tomorrow’s issues will be here soon enough.
2. I don’t want Zach to look back and think that the whole year was about his sick baby brother.
3. I want to look at whatever comes our way with a positive attitude. Expect things to turn out well. Imagining that things will turn out in the worst way possible doesn’t make you a “better” person or parent. Nor does it make the bad things any easier to deal with. It just makes you, and in return all of those around you, more anxious and negative. I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy to waste on negativity.
4. Accept the realities and find the absolute best way to deal with them.
5. Make sure that this first year of Nathan’s life is not ALL about his birth defects. I don’t want everyone around him constantly focused on his health issues no matter how severe they turn out to be. Keep a normal prospective of life as much as is humanly possible.
And with that, I had the bare bones of my rewrite. There were many subplots in our new story that had yet to be determined, leading characters we had yet to meet. But I was going to control the underlying plot. The theme if you will.
Not that I thought it was going to be easy. Oh no I knew it would take every ounce of strength I had and probably a few ounces I had yet to develop, but I was determined that we would get through this first year with those as our guidelines. And I resolved that if I followed them, regardless of how Nathan’s medical issues developed and what treatment plans we had to follow, I would consider the year a success.
I developed a few guiding mental mantras as we moved through the days and weeks. One was “don’t worry about the things over which you have no control” followed closely by “if you have control over it, do something, don’t just sit there and worry.” Another was, “It takes less energy to expect/imagine that things will turn out in the best possible way. Conserve your resources deal with the times that they don’t.” And yet another which I had to repeat nearly continuously early on and don’t have to think of very often lately. “Don’t treat Nathan differently/more carefully than you did Zach, unless one of his doctors has instructed you to. You’ve not yet been told that he’s any more delicate than any other child of his age.” And the biggie. “Deal with today. Don’t waste your resources trying to live more than one day at a time.” And finally, “You can only do your best and some days your best is going to be better than others. Everyone will just have to deal.”
Now I don’t want to make it sound like I was able to always follow the guidelines playing in my head. I’m not perfect and we’ve experienced a greater family stress load than I hope to ever see again (remember 8 weeks into Nathan’s little life I started a brand new, full-time job). Of course I worried when I shouldn’t have. Of course I came completely unglued a time or two. Of course I expected more out of myself than I should have. But overall I think we did an awesome job of getting ourselves from point A to point B.
It helps that we have an incredible little boy who has constantly surprised his doctors with his growth and recovery. It helps tremendously that we’ve had our prayers answered over and over again as each medical hurdle was tackled and the outcome each time has been wonderfully positive. When I look back on the past year and how far we have come I am overwhelmed with amazement and joy. The pieces of this rewrite have fallen so perfectly into place that the story seems almost too incredible.
But you know what? I’ll take it! with the knowledge that the things we learned will help us to handle the next rewrite life throws our way.
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| It's a Day to Celebrate!!It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are a few pictures to start off our day.
(Don't worry. I'm a writer, you'll still get your thousand words.) | | |
| HalloweenHere are some pictures of the boys on Halloween. Zachary asked if we could please go to houses this year because he was a big boy. On the porch before Trick or Treating. 
  
Filling our bags with candy.  
I tried to get a good picture of them both on the sofa after we got back, but this is all I got. 
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