Surprise of a Lifetime!

This year, the "New Year" was not just a holiday. It was, indeed, a new year. My husband and I received some rather surprising news in January.

We have a 22-year-old daughter and we were informed that we should be expecting a "new arrival." That's right, we would soon be adding a baby to our family. And, NO, our daughter was NOT the "new mom," -- I was! That's right -- we have 2 children -- one in college and one in diapers.

After several years of hoping for a second child, my husband and I had been told that I could not have another -- fifteen years ago! Apparently -- someone was wrong! And to make things even more crazy, we were given a March 1st duedate giving us less than 2 months to prepare.

I was fighting off bronchitis in September and November of last year and, finally, in November, I succumbed to pneumonia. I continued to fight off these infections into January and when I visited my OB/Gyn for my yearly checkup, she informed me that I was pregnant. Of course, I doubted her prognosis. I hadn't had any symptoms -- oh, wait -- I'd been tired, dragged out, nauseous, experiencing tearing pains in the pelvic region, etc. over the last 4 months -- while fighting off bronchitis and then, the pneumonia. These illnesses had masked the symptoms as they were "explained away" by my primary care physician (of 20 years) who had not investigated further because he knew I could not get pregnant -- wrong!

Due to my history, my OB/Gyn insisted on doing an ultrasound to make sure we weren't dealing with an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. No, and she was somewhat surprised that I was 32 weeks into the pregnancy at that point. Somewhat surprised? I think a better term for what my family was feeling was, hmm, --shell-shocked? It took weeks for it sink in, partially because we didn't have 9 months, or 8, 7, or even 5 months to prepare -- we had less than 2!

Talk about having to get ready in a hurry! Then he was born on his duedate only to find out he was 5 weeks early! The doctor had been deceived by his size because I am a Type II diabetic and he was large for his stage of development. He was a preemie! A 7 lb, 5 oz., 20.5 inch long preemie. Unfortunately, his lungs were not as fully developed as the rest of him and he spent the next 17 days in a special care nursery.

After he came home, he wound up in the ER 3X (with a 3 day admission for tests on one occasion) because he decided it would be fun to scare the living daylights out of us and stopped breathing! He was diagnosed with apnea. Apparently, his lungs were not the only thing that was not fully developed. The center of the brain that controls breathing was a little behind as well -- not uncommon in preemies apparently, but scary nonetheless. Time was the answer for this one -- with a monitor to let us know if he decided to play games with our adrenaline levels again!

Other than this he has caught up with -- or surpassed -- most of the milestones for his age. All of this aside, becoming a new parent (again!) has been a totally different experience than the first time. He is such a miracle and we look forward with anticipation to experiencing parenthood again -- if it doesn't kill us first!