A Sunday afternoon :)

Billy is the type of kid that as hard as I try to keep a secret, he seems to know what it is anyways. He could also be outside playing, and without wearing a watch, if there is something on tv he wants to watch, he will come inside at just the right moment. Sometimes, it's really spooky the way he does that. Very intune with us and himself? The first couple times we tried to surprise him with something, when he was younger, his dad and I thought that maybe he had over heard us talking. So we started being careful of when we talked about some things. When he was outside playing or if he was bowling, we went outside to talk about 'it'. Whatever way it happened, he couldn't be within ear shot at all. He had to be totally elsewhere or we did.

I was never sure if he hoped for what he got for his birthday or for Christmas, or this 'thing' he possesses had something to do with it. But the odd time, he seemed to know. Even if you put a box inside another box to sort of disguise what it might be. He knew anyways.

Today was no different.

I never said a word about the parade I was going to take him to today. Not one word. I heard about it on the radio in the car the other day. Checked the towns website today to find what the parade route was while he was in the shower. About ten to one, all I said to him was "we're going to go out in the car shortly. Make sure you wear a sweater."

So what does he do ?

He signs Santa Claus. (the motion of a man running his hand down his beard)

geeeeeeezzzzzzzzzz Before we even get out the door ? So not fair but I should have known he would 'know'.

Grab hot chocolate and off we go. Took a few minutes to find a parking spot as everybody else in the county had the same idea of going early and finding a parking spot. Lock up the car and we start walking to downtown Collingwood.

Was only there a couple minutes, sipping our hot chocolates, finally convincing Billy to put on his gloves and toque when his friend Paddy came up and signed 'hi'.

Cooool. Hi Paddy. And there's mom and dad right behind him. Billy bowls with Paddy Sunday afternoons (cancelled today because of the parade) and Paddy's dad always picks up Billy and drops him back off. And this family has had Billy over for dinners, parties, and sleep overs many times too.

We all moved off the corner Billy and I were standing on, hoping for a spot where the wind wouldn't whistle through us. No such luck though. Seems the wind was howling all the way down that street, leaving us nowhere else to go as that was the parade route. The bands and walkers in the parade were walking into the wind, so that must have been rough for them. It would have been a nice day, -1c low 30's F, if it wasn't for that wind. Instead, it felt a lot colder.

Paddy doesn't talk and wears hearing aids, so he and his parents are pretty fluent in sign language. Paddy's hands are flying as each float goes by, so I picked up a couple new signs. One being fire truck :D

The parade had been passing by with assorted trucks hauling trailers decorated with trees, fake snow and kids, local high school band, gymnasts etc etc .. you know how it goes. I did feel bad for the two bagpipe bands wearing their kilts. Bare legs and that wind? brrrrrr. And me being me (weird? lol), I had hoped they thought to put on warm shorts under their kilts at least. No leotards or anything for them. Hardy bunch of people you could say, when everybody else was bundled up in their snowsuits etc.

The parade had being going on for about forty minutes when Paddy's mom, Roseanne, asked if I thought Billy would like to go home with them, have dinner, stay over, and she'll take the two boys to the life skills program tomorrow as she is off work tomorrow.

Awwww that's real sweet of you. I don't have a change of clothes or anything for Billy with me. She says that's ok as Billy and Paddy are about the same height and size, if I was okay if Billy wore something of Paddy's.

So, after Santa finally went by at the fifty minute mark of the parade, I asked Billy what he thought of going with Paddy to his house .... big smile out of Billy ... sleep over ........ still smiling ... and Paddy's mom would take him to life skills tomorrow.  The kid never quit smiling ! He might love his mom but .............. hahahahaha

Needless to say, I left the parade by myself, walked to where I parked the car and came home to an empty place after a couple quick stops.

Which I didn't mind in the least. It's awesome that Billy has Paddy for a friend. They get along so well. And Paddy's parents have truly taken Billy into their home and their hearts. Which I will always be very thankful for.

Billy ... part II

While Billy was in the hospital, having just been born, his blood test showed he was low on iron (gee thanks mom lol) so they gave him formula with extra iron added. They didn't take him off that formula soon enough and he developed a problem, but was easily fixed by giving him regular stuff to drink (thank goodness) He lost a bit of weight, which was normal. Dropped down to 7 lbs 10 ozs and gained two ounces back before he was released.

But as it turned out, he was actually 'released' from the hospital before I was. I developed an infection in my c/section (bikini, thank you lol), so they kept me longer to make sure the antibiotics were clearing it up.

Then the day came that we both got to go home. Yayyyyyyyy lol

Now being a new baby and a first grandchild for both sides of the family, there must have been a gazillion pictures taken of him that first year.
You know the ones ...

Grandpa B holding him and feeding him with that special nipple, milk coming out of Billy's nose (yep, my dad tilted him back too much .. sit him more upright Grandpa lol)

Grandma B's look of horror at the milk coming out of Billy's nose and giving Grandpa 'what for' (but she wouldn't feed him .. too nervous)

Billy doing the skinny dip thing in the baby pool on a back porch.

Sitting ... crawling at appropriate stages.

Walking around the furniture but not on his own yet at a year.

Making cooing noises but no real attempts to form words like 'mom' or 'dada' yet.

Mothers Day, Easter, Christmas, first birthday and covered in cake were causes for that camera to be at the ready and flashing lol

Billy's surgery went well (we were told) to repair his cleft pallate but mom and dad sure weren't prepared for what he looked like when he came out of surgery. Poor kid looked like he got whacked with a baseball bat! And in an oxygen tent. He was miserable being stuck in the hospital. I was miserable having to leave him there. His dad couldn't stand being there for hours. Yep, a great time indeed :(

Billy had to wear a special shirt that had tongue depressers in the sleeves so he couldn't bend his arms at the elbow and stick things in his mouth, and he'd have to wear it for 6 weeks.

What they did, because the hole in the roof of his mouth was only about the size of a quarter and was where his uvula (that funny thing hanging down at the back of your mouth) should have been, they took layers of skin from other parts of the roof of his mouth and covered the hole (it would thicken and grow as he grew) and even took some of that skin and made him an uvula.

The staff thought he'd only have to be there about 4 days, but he ended up being in there for over a week. Yep, that poor kid, having to deal with having his mouth operated on and not understanding why, he caught the flu while in there. He looked awful, was miserable, and I'm sure he felt a bit abandoned when mom and dad left each day. ('nother story)

When he finally got better and got to come home, he had to wear that tongue depresser shirt 24/7 until we saw the surgeon and he gave the ok that the roof of his mouth healed up nicely, which was about 5 weeks later.

But we developed another problem when we sprung him from the hospital. Billy never had the suction to keep a soother in his face for long anyways so we didn't have to wean him off that thing, but at the age of just a year, Billy had inadvertently been weaned off the bottle. He refused it and I could only guess that the lambs nipple rubbed the tender spot on the roof of his mouth. Didn't do well with a regular cup, even with help. He wore a whole lot more than he drank as he would push the cup away from him. And anything else we tried, he refused it. Not good. He needed to get liquid into him. Eating was almost just as bad. Ended up trying baby food again, as it's soft and doesn't need any work. Seemed to help a bit, but he lost a little bit of weight anyways.

I don't know about other places, but where we lived, certain plastic dishes and cups weren't available in the stores just yet. So it was by a bit of fretting and ranting to a friend and she gave me one of the  'sippy cups' that her son had used. At the time, we could only get things like that through home parties. Billy fought it for a bit, but soon realized that he didn't have to work to get the liquid to come out of the funny mouth piece and we were finally in business! woohoo The apple juice must have tasted soooooooo good that day lol

He got a clean bill of health and the nasty shirt he wasn't overly happy with finally got lost before we left the doctors office hahaha.

Oh, we ended up going down to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto several times over a course of about 5 years. When his teeth finally all came in and the dental department took x-rays and said if he ever needed braces, they wouldn't have to pull 4 particular teeth as they never developed roots to even make a showing later on in life. He had to have tubes put in his ears several times over the span of a few years as they didn't drain properly and caused infections.

But all in all, he was healthy and happy and smiling since the day he was born. The only kid I knew that you could wake up from a sound sleep and he would smile at you. And he would sleep anywhere. Prop some pillows around him so he wouldn't fall off the bed/couch, so he was never cranky from not getting a nap. The 'terrible twos' didn't show up. No temper tantrums or anything like that. Sure, he would cry first thing in the morning because he was wet and hungry and mom was too busy sleeping to hear him when he first stirred lol But I did considered myself very lucky indeed with the baby/tot he was. Always counted my blessings.

He was 19 months old when he finally abandoned hanging on to the furniture to get around (or crawl between 'em). He had only been walking from the couch to the coffee table a couple days when he tripped and smacked his nose on the coffee table. I couldn't grab him fast enough, even though I was right there. He didn't break it, but he was left with a life long scar on the upper bridge of his nose. And he still wasn't attempting to form words yet. When the family doctor was asked about both, he just said 'he will when he's ready'. And I had heard that from other people, that some babies will walk and talk a little bit later than others. So even while I had started to be concerned, I wasn't at the same time, if that makes any sense lol. Considering what he went through in the 9 months before he was born, the surgery at a year old, to me it wasn't surprising that he might not be ready just yet.

I'm sure his second birthday would be considered a raging success as he had chocolate cake in his hair, in his ears, up his nose because he missed his mouth, on the floor, all over him and even down the front of his diaper hahaha. (And I sit here and wish they had digital camera's back then. lol) But one carried him very carefully from his high chair to the bath afterwards hahaha.

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I'm sure I left things out in this one and the last one, trying to remember everything, setting it up for the main introduction of Billy. (yes, that means there will be a part three .. sorry) If it comes to me, something important, I'll mention it in the next part.
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For Snow, Sue, Dave, and Cal with *hugsssssssssss*
Thank you for putting up with me lol

Please allow me to introduce ....

my son Billy, to you.

Oh where shall I start? From the beginning?

*Noooooooooo not that far back!* you are thinking. *T.M.I.!!* hahaha

No, I won't go quite that far back. But I do have to go back to one point in the pregnancy, because what happened is part of what helped make him the son he is.

When I was in my third month of pregnancy, I got really sick. And I mean SICK!

Imagine yourself losing 40 pounds in 30 days. How sick would you have to be to accomplish that?

Yeah. I was that sick. The only thing I ate that month and had it half-assed stay down was a jar of baby dill pickles, that I polished off in a week, early on that July. Sure, I did the craving thing when whatever hit me hadn't hit me that hard just yet. Had to have those baby dill pickles. And they were sooooooooo good and went down sooooooooooo nicely lol And they were all mine !! I wouldn't share them, not even with my husband of not quite two years hahaha.

Ever since I was a teen, whenever my tummy got the butterfly thing going on first thing in the morning, the only thing to help settle it was a cup of tea. With milk and a bit of sugar thank you. But that month? It was my enemy. Probably the milk, but I don't like tea without milk in it. I would drink apple juice, non-cola pop, cola pop, gingerale .. anything to try and keep something in my tummy, or at worst, something besides stomache acid when it came back up. By the end of the month, I was drinking Kool-Aid for the sugar, to keep whatever energy and strength I had left, which wasn't much.

I went to the hospital emerg room three times that month. First time because I was spitting up blood .... my throat was raw and irritated. The second time, they gave me an IV of saline solution and sent me home. The third time, they kept me a week and then sent me home when they needed the bed. But nobody could figure out why I was so sick. Not even the family doctor took it seriously. Never mind I was losing weight at an alarming rate. Would just be told to 'eat'. Kind of a waste of time to eat when anything came back up just as fast.

I was so weak and even with all the stuff I was drinking and hoping it would stay down, I was becoming dehydrated. My husband would come home from work, run my bath water, help me get in, help wash my hair and rinse it, and then almost have to stand inside the tub to help me get back out. I had almost nothing left to help myself.

The family doctor had his office on the second floor of a 3 story building and no elevator. So I almost had to be carried up the stairs to see him.

And yet, the only ones I could convince how sick I was, was my husband and his family. Not the doctors at emerg. Not my family. Was going to say something about my mother's opinion just then, but that's a whole 'nother story lol.

Let's just say, I came thisclose to losing the baby I was carrying, and I wasn't far behind. Twenty-three years old and I really thought 'thats all she wrote folks'. Never mind accidents or major illnesses like cancer taking me. Just one pregnancy gone awry.

Know what it took to convince a doctor of any sort that I was that sick?

The whites of my eyes went yellow.

Yep. I'm paler than usual from being sick, not looking healthy at all, and then I'm staring out at the world with yellow eyes.

One quick urine test and I was shipped off to the hospital PDQ ! Hepatitis they said. Stuck in my own little emergency room cubicle for a few hours until a bed became available upstairs. Stuck in Enterec Isolation (all body fluids monitored .. blood vials sealed and handled with care when leaving the room). Nurses coming in gowned from head to foot so that I only saw their eyes. Food trays, dishes, utensils were bagged when leaving my room. No visitors. The doctor coming in to say that they would have to abort the baby. Was a very scary time for me, all in all.

Then a doctor that specialized in liver diseases came to see me and told me he needed to do an ultrasound of my liver to see how badly damaged it was and go from there. The only problem was, the ultrasound didn't get done until the day I was being released. The IV they gave me got me feeling better. The yellow tinge to my eyes faded. Sure, I was feeling better, but now I'm afraid of the big bad world out there. I was safe and not feeling sick while I was in there. I wanted to stay there. But nope. No can do. I would find out what the ultrasound determined by my family doctor during my next visit.

So I called my father-in-law to please come get me. First thing I did was grab a glass of milk at his house. Yep. I had fallen in love with milk again while at the hospital and it had stayed down there. But it sure didn't outside of the hospital. Up it came. Within a couple days, I was back at the hospital emerg department. Stayed another week. My mom finally came down to see me while I was in that time.

And that's when I learned it wasn't Hepatitis. It was something that will give Hepatitis tests a positive result. The specialist said that my liver was normal and healthy and just tickety-boo. The ultrasound, by accident, showed gallstones in the bile duct.

Enter the surgeon. He says unless I get really really sick (wasn't I already? ... No, if you get like that again) he won't do surgery until after the baby is born. I would have to go on a special diet so I don't trigger another attack like that. No dairy products whatsoever. No fats. Just lean meat if I eat meat at all.

And so went the rest of my pregnancy. Certains smells made me nauseous. Stayed away from all dairy stuff. Except for a tiny bit in my tea lol. I took a leave of absense from work. And slowly gained back twenty out of the forty I lost.

I had three 'due dates'. (doctor couldn't make up his mind? lol) Mid-February ... early February ... end of January. My father-in-law had circled Valentines Day on his calendar. (this baby was going to be their first grandchild and they were both proud as peacocks lol)

When I went to bed on the Sunday, I had only been asleep a short time when I felt labor pains. Ohhhhhhhhhh cool. Grab my watch and trundled off to the living room to time them.

Hold it. Something isn't quite right. They varied in length and time between. Call the doctor's answering service, they called him, he called me back. False labor he says. You're not ready yet.

bummers

Go through Monday without a hitch. Until I went to bed. Then the false labor pains started again.

geeeeeeezzzzzzzzz

Now that was the week that we were getting new living room furniture being delivered Wednesday morning. My husband was going for a driving test with a trucking company for a job the same day (about a 2 hour drive from where we lived .. main office). The plan was, I would be home anyways when the new furniture was being delivered, and I could tell the men where to put it. 'And don't you dare try to move it yourself' I was admonished. lol

A new flavour of potato chip had just come out. Sour Cream and Bacon. At it was soooo good. Yep. On the Tuesday, I was craving those things and asked my husband to grab me some please. So while I was lying on the floor eating those chips and watching tv, my husband and his brother lifted the furniture over me as they took the old stuff outside. Hindsight being 20-20, that was probably a dumb move on my part to park myself where I did, but I trusted those two to not trip on me or drop something on me hahaha I was 24 and the world wasn't looking half bad by then. I had survived the previous summer after all.

Head off to bed about 11ish. Again with the false labor pains. Out to the living room I go and get into the swivel rocker that used to be my grandmothers. Figured I would just doze off there and spend the night.

I wasn't asleep very long when the labor pains changed. They were now coming in rhythm instead of erratic. Each one lasting slightly longer than the last and slightly closer together. Time them for a bit, then called the doctor's answering service, who called him, who called me. Get yourself over to the hospital he says.

So, I trundled down the hall to wake my husband and give him the good news.

What does he say??

"I just knew it would happen today of all days and you would wake me up at 3 in the morning."

He wasn't mad or upset. He just shook his head as he headed off to shower first. (he had a job interview to go to after all lol) Out the door we go. He stops at a coffee shop and grabs a coffee ... 'want one?' ...'Nooooo' as I stare at my watch faithfully lol

Gets me to the hospital, checks me in. Waits until I'm in the birthing room before he runs off. Stops at his mom's house to grab his sister .. whisks her away to our house to wait for the new furniture ... then heads out to the company he's hoping to get a job with.

By the time he gets back to the hospital (forgetting to get his sister and take her back home .. she ends up taking a cab), his wife has had her water broken by the doctor, an IV in her arm that induces labor (even though I already was in labor), an epidural in her back, fetal heart monitor strapped to her belly.

The baby had never dropped into position.

I'll spare you details, but when said wife complains she has to go to the bathroom and a nurse says "How you going to get there because I'm not carrying you?" triggers a check and sure enough, I'm fully dilated.

Puuuuuuuussssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yep. Maybe by pushing, I could push the baby into position and out.

Fiddle and fool around doing that for a bit and there was no progress at all.

Then bells and whistles go off. Hospital staff spring into action. Check the fetal heart monitor.

Baby is in distress !!

Gurney shows up from out of nowhere and I'm wheeled down to an operating room. Eyes staring at me as I'm strapped down.

Give her a local or knock her out ? The anethetist opts to knock me out.

Count backwards says a pair of eyes.

I awake briefly in the recovery room. The attending nurse asks 'what did you have?'.

Don't know.

Check your wrist band she says. So I do.

Awwwwwww I had a boy. And promptly dozed off again.

Wake up in a hospital room upstairs. Husband comes to see me. A healthy baby boy he says. Weighed 8 lbs 2 ozs he says.

But

He has a hole in the roof of his mouth they'll have to fix.

My son was born at 2:59 p.m. and he was six hours old before I saw him for the first time. He was beautiful and pink and had dark eyes, that soon turned brown. Soon found out he didn't have any suction though. Not for his mothers milk. Not for a regular nippled bottle. Had to have a special nipple .. a lambs nipple they call it. A bit longer and a bigger hole for the milk to come out.

They said the cleft pallate was because the roof of the mouth closing is the last thing that happens during the first trimester. Everything else is done and formed by that point. And with me being so sick that third month, it impeded the roof of the mouth from being finished.

Sure. I felt guilty for that. Very. I knew before he was even born I would love him with all my heart and soul and I did that to him. So innocent, and yet he would have to have surgery before too long. (as it turned out, they wanted to schedule him the day of his first birthday and I said no, so he had surgery 5 days after his first b/day)

So, between the new furniture coming, a new job (yes, he got the job and started there 3 weeks later), and a new baby making his appearance, Wednesday, February 15th 1984, will go down in history and repeated time and again how I picked that day to have a baby. hahahaha

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Sorry I got so long winded with this. Just be glad I didn't put part two (or part three? lol) here too hahaha. But stay tuned lol

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(for Dave, Snow, Spaceeagle, and Sue)