Background (Chapter 2)

  I'm not feeling well today so I'm trying to take it easy. Seemed like a good day to sit in front of the computer and write Chapter 2. Travel with me now back to the morning of February 28, 2009....

   Sometime around three or four am I woke up with stomach pain. It wasn't very painful and I thought it was just the typical gas pains that I get late in my pregnancies. I was scheduled to work that morning so I just rolled over, hoping to get a couple hours more sleep. At 5:30 I got up for work. When I stood up I felt the blood. I went to the restroom, I suppose to verify that it was indeed blood. I was strangely calm. I opened the bathroom door, asked for a towel, and told my husband to get ready because we were going to the hospital. Perhaps I didn't want him to panic, or maybe my base survival instincts kicked in, but I just remember being so "matter of fact" about it all. As if we were headed to the grocery store.

  When we got to the hospital they sent us straight back to maternity. I told the triage nurse that I was bleeding. She very calmly gave me the paper clothes (you all know what I'm talking about lol) and said "Let's see how much blood there really is." When she saw she said "Wow. We need to get her into surgery right away." That was right about when I entered panic mode. If the nurse is scared you'd better believe the patient is. I can remember as they were prepping me there was a scheduled c-section patient complaining because she was getting bumped. I'm normally a very sympathetic person but I wanted to scream at her insensitivity. Although even at that point I didn't realize how much danger Teegan and I were in. I mean, it's 2009, people don't die in childbirth anymore...right?

  That was my first (and only) experience under general anesthesia. I remember her telling me she was going to start counting backwards from 10. I never even heard her say "10". When I woke up they called the pediatrician in. She told me that Teegan wasn't breathing as well as they wanted him to, so they were transferring him to a hospital with a NICU. So I had to spend the next hour in recovery, alone with that knowledge. I can't imagine what my husband was going through during my c-section. Alone in the waiting room, waiting for someone to tell him something, anything about his wife and son.

  They took me to my room in time for me to see Teegan before they transferred him out. My first moment with my baby lasted just a couple minutes. I couldn't hold him. He was intubated. The transfer team was already there. They held his transfer so that I would have a chance to see him before he left. Mercifully the hospital staff put me in a room with another mother whose baby was transferred out. I don't know how I would have handled having to share a room with a perfectly healthy baby. Sometimes our human emotions can be quite unfair. Like I was somewhat jealous that Will was able to see Teegan and I couldn't. It was totally unfair to him, and of course I wanted Will to see him, but it still stung a little that I was stuck in the hospital for three days.

  Turns out my placenta had torn away from the uterine wall. Hence all the blood. In case you didn't know, when that happens the baby starts to lose it's source of oxygen. When my OB came around the next day he said "You were very lucky." Those four words are what made me realize that Teegan and I actually could have died. I never considered that could happen in this age of modern medicine. Revisiting that day has reminded me how truly blessed we are. Life with Teegan is challenging no doubt. But I thank God that he is still here. I can hold him and hug him and pinch his cute little cheeks.

  Well, I think I'm going to wrap up the "background blogs". I have all these ideas floating around in my head, subjects I want to address. There is still one particular day in our life that I will be revisiting. I just don't think I'm ready to go back there yet. So for now I'm going to go hold my little angel. You all have a great day!

Background (Chapter 1)

   Since Teegan is almost two years old, I need to summarize our lives up to this point. I think it will be easier on me as the writer and you as the reader if I do it in parts. Thus begins Chapter One.

   There's no such thing as just a special needs child. A child's disability affects everyone in the family; parents and siblings. You have now become a special needs family. It would be impossible for me to write about Teegan without mentioning his impact on all of us. Therefore, I must introduce you to the members of our party. I have five amazing boys and two awesome stepdaughters. My oldest three are with my ex-husband, then there are my twin stepdaughters, then my last two boys with my forever husband. Teegan is the baby of this bunch. All six of his siblings are healthy.

   And now for Teegan's birth story. I am hypothyroid, which makes it a high-risk pregnancy. I wasn't that concerned though. After all, I had four healthy pregnancies already. During my first ultrasound, they discovered mild hydronephrosis (fluid in the kidneys) and mild ventriculomegaly (ventricles in the brain were dilated). Both conditions have about a 90% chance of a normal outcome so the doctor wasn't very concerned. He said it was just "something to keep an eye on." My next two ultrasounds were the same. The conditions were still there but still very mild. I walked out of that first ultrasound feeling fine. Sometime in the next couple days I started to worry. At some point I just "knew" that something was wrong. I pushed that feeling aside, chalked it up to the ultrasound. "The doctor isn't overly concerned so I shouldn't be either" was what I kept telling myself. I never gave voice to that feeling. I wish I would have. I firmly believe in mother's intuition. I tried to ignore it though. I felt like if I didn't say it out loud than it wouldn't be real. Looking back on it now, I feel like I cheated my husband and I out of the chance to mentally prepare. If I had spoken up maybe we would have done an amnio, maybe they would have looked closer at the ultrasounds. Never ignore that feeling that something may be wrong. Call it mother's intuition, call it the voice of God, call it whatever you wish, just listen. It's usually real and it's usually right.

  I still have a lot of story to tell. However, I don't want each blog to be too long. So I'm going to end here for tonight. To my friends and family, I'm still interested in your feedback. Your opinions carry a great deal of weight with me, so let me know how I'm doing. To strangers who may have happened across this blog, I hope what you've read helps you in some way. Thank you all for taking the time to join us in our adventure.

 

"Why Holland?" you ask...

Welcome to my very first post on my very first blog. Hopefully as time goes on my posts will be more polished. I shall valiantly try to keep this from becoming an online "diary". My husband and I have spent the past two years feeling very much alone. I know at times I have longed for someone else who has been where I was. My wish is that maybe I can be that person for someone else. Maybe there is a mom out there who will find this blog and feel less alone, maybe find some encouragement from the words that I write. I hope so.
Today though, I want to explain the title of this little blog of mine. There is a lovely essay circulating out there written by a woman named Emily Perl Kingsley. It is her attempt to describe what it's like to have a special needs child and she does so beautifully.

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this…



When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.



After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."



"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.



But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.



The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.



So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.



It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.



But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."



The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.



But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley

When Teegan was born our family touched down in Holland. Here we are, and here we shall stay. So, this blog is about our adventures here. Good or bad, painful or beautiful, it will all be here. And if you're a new parent of a special needs baby staring into the great unknown, you're not alone. I invite you to learn from what I've learned and continue to learn. We have a long road ahead of us. No need to travel it alone.