You must have been a beautiful baby...

I was to post this yesterday (1/9/2009) but circumstances entirely within my control (you read that correctly) stopped it from happening so here we go...

Friday was my son's 7th birthday and here is his story.

My wife and I went through some tough times in the year 2000, but by May of 2001 we had worked out a lot of our differences and were moving on. Michelle had decided to go back to school and get her degree. To that end she enrolled at Penn State Fayette and was start classes in September. We had also decided to wait to have another (2nd) child until she completed her studies.

Not long after classes started we were sitting at the dinner table when Michelle said she had a craving for an banana split.

I told her that if she had said any other word other than "craving" I would have let it go...but I had a feeling she was pregnant.

I told her I was going to get a pregnancy test and she told me in no uncertain terms to NOT go get one while she was at class.

So when she got home the tests were sitting on the sink in our bathroom.

(As a side note I bought two tests, because when Michelle was pregnant with our daughter she took three to be sure! LOL!)

Seeing the tests Michelle told me she would take it just to shut me up about the whole being pregnant thing.

Several minutes later she told me I'd better come and look at the test.

Yes, she was pregnant.

Our first child was born premature (at six months) due to preeclampsia so Michelle's doctors were very careful and monitored her blood pressure and weight gains closely.

For the first six months there were no problems and we thought everything would go smoothly this time.

Then one Sunday we were sitting around waiting to go to our nieces birthday party when Michelle got an awful headache. A check of her blood pressure showed it was very high and we went straight to the emergency room.

There was a bad snow storm that day and it took awhile to get all the tests done being a weekend, but her doctor decided to not fool around and send her to a hospital in Pittsburgh (where our daughter as born also) just in case the baby had to come early.

The following Wednesday, January 9, 2002, I went to visit Michelle and found her throwing up. The nurse on hand said she had been sick all day. Eventually the doctors decided that it was a result of the pregnancy and preeclampsia and the only way to stop the problem was to take the baby early.

We both agreed and were moved to one of the birthing areas in the hospital.

Several hours passed as doctors were in and out and forms were signed, but at 10:10pm Joshua Daniel Heller was born at a weight of 2 pounds 10 ounces and a length of 12 inches!

He cried when he was born (I was in the room) and he looked a lot like me but they whisked him away to check his viability and to take care of Michelle.

The next morning (I had slept in a chair in the hospital room next to Michelle that night) a nurse came in and became concerned by Michelle's vitals.

Her blood pressure was low and she was very pale.

She was taken to the ICU and I was asked to leave the room so the doctors could do their thing. The keys to my car and my cell phone were still in the room so I was a man with no where to go and no information on what was going on with my wife and child.

For the next several hours I was not allowed in to the ICU, no doctor would tell me what was happening and I also could not get in to see our son in the NICU.

I wondered why people were staring at me as I wandered around the hospital...I finally looked in a mirror in the restroom and realized that my lack of sleep and crying had made my eyes blood red and I had the look of a crazy person!

Finally I was told that Michelle's liver was bleeding into the thin film that surrounds it. Our options were to wait until the surgeon came in the next day or transfer her to another facility across town right now.

We opted for the quickest surgery possible and she was then moved to the next hospital where surgery was performed that evening. She remembers nothing after Josh was born until a day or so after the surgery.

Four days later she was sent home.

Three months after that Josh came home. We had two months in the NICU and one month at TIC just like we had with his sister.

Although he had a tougher time than his sister did with his lungs he only came home with a need for an oxygen tank and he was done with that within two months.

When a child is born premature there are many things that go wrong...and we have been blessed with two children who seem to have zero side effects from their ordeal and for that we are eternally grateful!

So here we are seven years later and Josh is in first grade and doing very well.

It amazes me how much faster time goes when you are watching someone else grow up.

~ Glenn

PS: Click on the title of the blog...Josh's middle name came from this song.

2016 Edit: The original link in the title is not there anymore...you can hear the song that was the inspiration for Josh's middle name here.


 And here is Josh today.