My Son's Birthday
Here is letter than I had written reflecting on my son's birth. I wrote it in celebration of his first birthday. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of just how blessed we really are...
A year ago today I was in the hospital with my wife eagerly awaiting the birth of our third child, Cole. Yes, we knew ahead of time to expect a boy and named him in advance. :) Having been thru this experience twice before (we had two daughters) it was going pretty well and I was looking forward to having my wife back to normal (pregnancy is hard for her) and having a new addition to the family. Feeling a little helpless like most fathers-to-be do. My wife was due... and we were ready!
Well, when he was born... the Doc showed us our son and we were all caught up in the excitement of it all. After a moment or two the doctor mumbled something to the nurse about the baby's skin color and they took him over to a table to take a closer look... The relaxed atmosphere was replaced by a very stressful one as they tried to get the baby to breathe. They said that he was breathing in, but was not breathing out. :( My son was turning blue and things did not look very good. I watched, feeling helpless... looking at both the baby and my wife.... The doctor asked me to press the "pink" button. (Alerting a specialty nurse to look at the baby.)
At that moment, the baby that we had looked forward to and planned for the past nine months... was looking like his visit on this planet would be a brief one. Well... they convinced him to breathe correctly... and he was looking better... (MAJOR relief). He had a problem with his feet and they needed to put a full length cast on each leg.... poor little guy. :(
I went home to get some sleep and they somehow convinced my wife that if she let them watch the baby in the nursery that she would be able to get some sleep too... (which she needed... she was very tired from before). About 5 o'clock the next morning I received a call from my wife... she sounded very sad... she told me that when they looked at Cole closer in the nursery that they noticed he had a heart murmur... and his skin coloring was not right again... He was not acting normal...It appeared that he had other problems to deal with. After talking with my wife and trying to reassure her... when I hung up the phone I was crying like a baby... I prayed to God... asking for some support and guidance thru this difficult time... I must say that I have never felt closer to God than at that moment in time.... I could not fall back to sleep until I received assurance from God that Cole would be alright... He assured me that Cole would share our lives for some time.... I did not know if he meant several hours, days, or years, but somehow I felt that God would do what was best... As they say... His will be done... When I got to the hospital that morning... I was amazed to find that my son's heart murmur had went away ... that his problems had, for the most part, disappeared.... He still had the casts on his legs, but somehow they seemed minor compared to the possibility of losing him... our little angel.
So it is with special feeling that I send this message to you... At this point our experiences of a year ago seem very far away....
To this day, every time that I tell Cole that I love him it is with a special love... the kind of love you feel for a child that you almost never had.
May peace be with you and yours this Holiday Season,
HYSD :)PS. Someday I hope to be lifting weights with my son and talking about the day that he almost got away.
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