Let’s start at the beginning. Or at least somewhere near the beginning.
After having been married for five years, we were beginning to believe that children were simply not in the cards for us. When I discovered that I was pregnant in the fall of 1995, we were elated and made the announcement at Thanksgiving dinner. The next year, we made the same announcement. And the following year, again, made the same announcement. The fourth year in a row, my husband stated that he had an announcement to make and as everyone groaned expecting the same announcement as in previous years, he took perverse please in saying that we were NOT pregnant.
Christian was born on June 15, 1996, healthy and happy after what seemed an eternity of labor and delivery, ultimately ending in an emergency C-section after I stopped dilating. He weighed in at 7 pounds 11 ounces. His brother Dakota followed on July 2, 1997; and his sister Jordan on June 9, 1998.
The three were close in age and close in friendship—they were always together. Oddly, it was always Jordan that I expected to have “issues”. After all, Alan was undergoing focused-beam radiation treatment following testicular cancer surgery when I got pregnant with her. Needless to say, she was a high risk pregnancy. With Dakota, I was at risk of gestational diabetes; as a result, he weighed in at a hefty 8 pounds 12 ounces. Almost immediately after Dakota was born—and while I was recovery from my second C-section—a doctor came to me and told me that he was being moved to another hospital, one that had a neonatal intensive care unit. Alan had gone to dinner and arrived back at the hospital just in time to see his son being loaded into the back of an ambulance. He spent the next 10 days in the NICU of a local hospital due to a pneumothorax (i.e., he had a whole in his lung).
For the record, after being pregnant for 9 months, going through a C-section, and delivering a seemingly healthy baby boy, leaving the hospital empty-handed was traumatic. Dakota was almost four days old before I got to see him, let alone hold him.
In comparison, Christian was a completely normal, uncomplicated pregnancy.
I wish that I had been able to be there more, but I was working full-time. Alan was the one that was the primary parent; he was the one that got to see all the firsts, but he made sure to share everything with me and took great pride in having the kids each display their newfound talents for me when I got home.
Money was always tight and, even though I was working, we had to rely on monthly state aid and, occasionally, generous friends and family members. Regardless of constant money woes, everyone was generally happy and healthy.
The first health issue that Christian ever had was when he was four and we discovered that he had asthma. At least one doctor believes that a water leak in the wall of our apartment, which caused mold to grow on the underside of his wooden bed, was the initial cause of his asthma. We didn’t even know about the water leak until we noticed that the floor was wet. It could have been leaking for months without us even knowing.
I’ll pick up from there later.
