by A year ago yesterday Averie announced to everyone that she’d be having a baby brother soon. A year ago yesterday, we still had no clue as to what we were getting into. How on earth AJ’s diagnoses weren’t caught during the scans — both this one and the one we had following our car accident right before he was born — I’ll never know, but in some ways I’m thankful. Thankful that I was able to carry out the rest of the pregnancy without stress and worry. Thankful that we all got to truly be excited, rather than scared, about what the future held for us.
That said, yes, it would have been nice to have started out immediately at the U of I, it would have been nice to have had an idea as to what was going on and not had those first few hours/days of blind panic after he choked on milk, turned blue and was whisked off to the NICU at St Lukes, separating my baby from me, leaving Aaron to advocate for him up at the U of I while I was left to recover in Cedar Rapids, and Averie was left watching her poor parents fall apart and her baby brother who was seemingly healthy but a few hours prior intubated and whisked off.
I still have the ultrasound pictures in the kitchen. Somehow I stumbled across them cleaning something up the other day, and there was a definite strong mix of emotions tied to it – anger and sadness about how things went, how we could have planned better, but also happiness that we’re still here fighting our battles here today and that he’s the strong little trooper that he is, teaching us as much as he does.
I don’t know if I’m truly overall thankful that things happened the way that they did or not yet, and maybe someday I’ll be able to let go of the anger and sadness entirely and just hold on to the hope and happiness that he’s given us…. That day isn’t quite yet today, but I do know that all things happen the way they do for a reason. <3
