A whole new world

How can life prepare you for the words spoken to you by a doctor, that is going to completely change the dynamic and future of your family? There is no preparation, there is no book. This is the way life works, and in all the uncertainty, in all the fear, the unknown, we know we are all going to be ok.

To quickly recap what we have gone through the past 3 months, I will start with the day Gavin was born. He was born, happy and healthy on Oct. 2, 2008. Our little boy, who had his odds against him, finally made it to this world - after what seemed the longest pregnancy in Guiness Book history (to me anyway). At 8 weeks pregnant, I hemorrhaged and sat in a hospital for 6 hours in Las Vegas waiting for the ER doctor to perform the D & C. He was certain, as was I, that a miscarriage was happening. To make a very long story short, my little gummy bear survived, and I was on bedrest for the next 5 months with a pretty moderate sized subchorionic hematoma (blood clot on the placenta that tore over half the placenta away from the uterus). We knew at any moment, the placenta could continue to tear away - and we had the chance of losing him even going into the 5th month of pregnancy.

October 2nd, was a changing day for our family. Those long months of pregnancy filled with worry, anxiety and hope proved to seem like it had gone by in a second the moment I laid eyes on my new son. He was finally here! I couldn't ask for a more beautiful, healthy baby. Not knowing the gender of our baby, made that moment, one of the best memories I have to date of my life.

The beginning of our new journey, probably really began the day he was born. Or was it the next day, I don't know. When you're in the hospital, on some good drugs, the days kind of mesh together. I remember holding Gavin, gazing down at his porcelin white skin and telling my husband, "there is something wrong with his eyes.". Not his vision, his eyes. Little did I know then, how profound those words are, and how that mommy instinct would prove to be so correct.