Happy Birthday D.K.

Eight years ago today, my water broke around 2 in the morning. It was a Sunday. I was 32 1/2 weeks pregnant with D.K. hoping I had another 7 weeks or so left of an otherwise uneventful pregnancy. Smart Guy, Prophet, and myself had just moved from WV to OH the weekend before and my mom was there helping me get my house unpacked and ready to live in...but while my mom was there, my hubby wasn't. He'd left for Detroit for the weekend with all the teens to do a weekend mission project and wasn't due home until sometime that evening. My first checkup with my new OB was the next day and I hadn't bothered to figure out where the office or the hospital was yet.

So there my mom and I stood in the kitchen of my barely unpacked new home quietly, so Prophet wouldn't wake up, trying to figure what on earth we were gonna do. I didn't have a phone book yet, the church directory was in Smart Guys office having not yet been brought home, and I was clueless as to where anything was yet in my new town. Then I remembered a little slip of paper that one of the college girls who grew up in town had given me with her phone number on it just in case we needed a sitter for Prophet. I called her for help and she immediately told me she'd be over in 10 minutes. She was and she drove mom and I straight to the hospital. They checked me in and checked to make sure my water had indeed broken and that I hadn't merely just peed uncontrolably all over the bathroom floor... as if I couldn't tell the difference. The did an ultrasound to see how far along I was. I KNEW how far along I was. After you have a preemie, like Prophet, your next pregnancy is extremely carefully monitored. The tried to tell me after the ultrasound that I wasn't quite 30 weeks. I ignored them, knowing they were wrong. I knew he was past the 32 week mark and that if I had him, he'd be okay.

At some point early that morning, one of the kids moms called the home where Smart Guy was staying with the teens up in Detroit to tell him I was in labor and he needed to head home. So Smart Guy called the other house where the girls were, at six in the morning, and told them they all had a half hour to get up, get dressed, eat, and be ready to get in the van to leave.

Once my contractions started, they decided to send me over to the bigger hospital with a NICU on the other side of town. The put me in the ambulance and away I went in this town I was new to. They got me to the other hospital, hooked me up to the monitors and we waited to see what would happen.

The same mom that called Smart Guy worked in the hospital's finance department and immediately took on the job of making sure all of our yet-to-be-filled-out insurance papers were filled out and filed with the church conference. She sat by my bedside on a Sunday morning and filled in all the blanks as I gave her the info.

At some point in the afternoon, the entire youth group showed up at the hospital and sat in the waiting room waiting for their new youth pastor's wife to give birth.

Finally at 5:55 pm, approximately 14 hours after my water broke, I gave birth to a 4 pound, 8 ounce little boy. He was 16 1/2 inches long. I actually got to hold him before they took him to the NICU for observation. I was elated.

A few hours and several visitors later, I finally was able to go the NICU and see him. A nurse wheeled me down and left me for the NICU nurses to tend to. When I found him, he was in an open bed with no oxygen supplements at all. His chest was not retracting due to struggling breaths, his face was not hidden under a bunch of tubes and wires, and he was so big. They laid him in my arms and I immediately began to cry. The nurse brought me a box a tissues and told me it was okay, that he was doing very well. She didn't have a clue why I was crying. There were no words to explain the joy in my heart. I wasn't crying for fear of the unknown. I'd been to the unknown and back with Prophet. The NICU experience was normal for me, it held nothing new. I was an old pro. I was crying because my baby was in my arms, breathing on his own, and I was discussing when he could attempt to nurse for the first time, and he was only hours old. I spent most of my time in the hospital down at the NICU with D.K. until they let me go home.

They sent me home with a breastpump, which became my best-friend and my worst enemy all within a days time. It was the one thing that only I could give my baby in the hospital, but it also hurt and made my schedule even more crazy than it was with a baby in the hospital, a toddler at home, and a new home. I was determined he would have nothing but my milk, because I had been too sick when Prophet was born to nurse him. Everytime I left the hospital I would check the NICU fridge to see how much milk he had left and would send Smart Guy over with another bottle after my 3 am, half-asleep, pumping if I needed to.

Thankfully he was only in the hospital for 11 days. They let him come home a little early because they knew I'd already done the "preemie thing" with Prophet and knew how to keep him awake to take a bottle and all the other preemie things. When he came home he would nurse to start every feeding and then I'd give him a bottle of breastmilk to be sure he'd gotten enough to grow. Preemies get tired nursing very quickly until they hit full-term or so, so the bottle was unfortunately necessary. I kept in close contact with a lactation nurse. I'd take him in, she'd weigh him on a special scale before he nursed and then again after he nursed to see how much he was getting. On his due date, she said to take away the bottle and see what happened. I did and a week later when I left him with his daddy for two hours to go to a dance recital he refused the bottle I'd left for him. He never again had a bottle. He nursed until he was 17 months old.

He grew fast and by the time he was about 18 months old was the same weight as his older brother. By the time he was about 2, they were same size and I was asked contiually if they were twins. For a couple years I had one size in their closet and they just shared it all. One day when he was age 4, I suddenly realized that he was the tallest kid in his preschool class. The kid who was next closest in height was actually a year older than him. He slowly went up on the charts until last year he finally went off the charts for his age. He's officially one of the tallest kids his age in the entire country.

D.K. has always been a "momma's boy". I don't mean that badly at all. He's just always been more likely to come to me for everything than his daddy. Prophet is just the opposite. Even when D.K.'s in a little "dramatic stupor" he still finds hugs and love for me. It's starting to feel wierd that my little boy is getting almost as tall as me and that in a year or two he'll probably be looking me in the eyes when he hugs me. Just this evening he was standing right in front of me trying to tell me that he's as tall as my forehead. Uh, sorry dude, not quite, my nose, maybe, not my forehead.

It's hard to fathom that it's been eight years since I gave birth to that little tiny baby. He's changed obviously. He's turned into a very dramatic, dinosaur loving, girl-protecting little boy who loves spelling, his brother and sister, and wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up. I can't wait to see what's ahead for this guy as he grows up.

Happy Birthday to my favorite eight-year-old!!! I love you so much!!