Happy Thanksgiving!

There are so many things to be thankful for not only this time of year but all year long. I am thankful for so many things such as having a job, a roof over our heads, food to eat every day, the air I breathe. My life is certainly blessed and I think many people would agree that they are blessed as well. Being a wife and mother is the icing on the cake. I'm so grateful for having such a caring and understanding husband who puts up with me and all my moods! I'm so grateful to God for blessing me with not only Dean but for my precious son Ryan. He is truly amazing. From being born early and surviving to being an independent, go-getter 3 year old boy. He makes me smile just looking at him and always makes me laugh..every day!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my family & friends who I am also thankful for. Thank you for thinking, praying and always being there for Dean and I whenever we need.

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving 2008

Ryan's 1st Thanksgiving 2007

Thankful

Since this week is Thanksgiving and we are still in Prematurity Awareness Month, I'd thought I'd post a couple videos of Ryan. This might not be a big deal to most but for us it is. Thanks to physical therapy, Ryan's toe walking is now completely non-existant and the stiffness in his left leg has improved dramatically..hence why he can climb like it's no big deal!



Ryan is pretty much nonstop talking now (at least around us--he's still shy in certain situations) and loves to say his ABC's & numbers. He can count to 20 most all the time, skipping 12 for some reason, but of course when I turned on the camera he acted like he didn't know anything past 10. He's doing so great though since last year at this time he was only saying 2-3 word phrases.

Prematurity Awareness Day 2010

It was well after 10 pm of the day Ryan was born. It had been a very long 24 hours with hardly any sleep. The night before seemed to be quiet so I sent Dean home to get some rest. I had not had any contractions that the nurses & doctors detected on the monitors since my water broke 2 days before and they had even taking me off the IV fluids. Things changed a few hours after Dean left and by 2 am I kept telling Ryan to hang on and don’t come yet, but he was ready. He was born at 5:44 am by emergency c-section because #1 he was breech and #2 they had to give me general anesthesia since I was already fully dialated by the time the doctor in charge arrived. The day went by and my parents & brother stayed for many hours. I got to see pictures my brother took of Ryan and I just cried. Nothing would prepare me for when I saw my little prince in person. When one of the evening nurses came in sometime after 10 pm, she wanted me to try and get up. She asked me if I had even seen my baby yet and I told her no, that she was the first person to even tell me (okay, ask me gently) I had to try and get up. Without hesitation she said, "well I can get you a wheelchair and wheel you over there" (to the Children’s Hospital attached to the hospital I was in). THAT sure got me up! She helped clean me up (remember I just had surgery that morning) and off we went down the hallways of the hospital. Once we got to the Children’s Hospital, she let Dean take over and told us where to go. I was in pain but all I could think about was seeing my baby. We wheeled into the NICU waiting area and called back to the nurses station. Dean knew where to go since he had been there earlier so we made our way into Pod I. I could barely get up to wash my hands & arms but I managed to. The nurse even told me after a minute or so, that it was fine if I couldn’t do the entire 3 minute hand washing (which is required). Dean wheeled me across the room to the isollette nearest the window and I saw my precious baby in person for the first time.

Of course I immediately started crying. Seeing my baby hooked up to all the machines, many needles & wires coming and going from his body and how tiny he was just took my breath away. The nurse started telling us how good he was doing just from the sheer fact that he was on CPAP and didn’t have to be on the mechanical ventilator. She then started explaining all the different wires & machines but to be honest, I was just staring at Ryan and everything else I heard was background noise. I couldn’t get over that this was our child. Our first born baby. And he had to come into this world and start fighting.

But he did fight and still is a fighter.

Ryan had & still has so many incredible people helping him (and us) fight along the way. All of the doctors and nurses, his Early Intervention Coordinator, his Physical Therapists & Speech Therapists. Our family and dear friends who have stayed with us through it all and lent us their hands for anything we may need. I think most of the credit should go to not only GOD, but to Ryan himself. He is strong and determined.

That was evident 5 days after his surgery, when he was a week old and he continually removed the nasal cannula from his nose, proving to the nurses that he didn’t need any help breathing. It was evident when at 13 months old, he took his first steps and hasn’t slowed down since. It was evident at just over 2 years old when he finally started really talking, in 2-3 word sentences and not just single words, and even more so now at 3 years old because most times we can’t get him to be quiet. He has a smile that can light up a room. When he smiles, his whole face smiles. You can really see that he is happy. I’m so proud that he is MY son and I know Dean would say the same thing.

It’s almost hard to believe that he was born weighing 2 lbs. 13 oz. What does that compare to? A sack of flour? Nope, that is usually 5 lbs. A 2 liter soda? Nope, that is about 4 lbs. Next time your in the produce aisle, pick up an average size Eggplant. That's what 2 1/2 lbs feels like. Ryan was just a tad bigger than that when born but after his surgery on his 2nd day of life and not being able to eat for 10 days, he got down below 2 1/2 lbs. We got through it all though. Somehow we managed to get through it. It wasn't easy. I cried every day. I think being somewhat ignorant about it all probably helped me get through it. I barely knew what the March of Dimes was much less what it meant for a baby to be born at 28 weeks. But since then, I've found out so much that my mind can't even comprehend all of it and I have met some fabulous people along the way as well.

Today, November 17, 2010, marks a day thousands of people from around the world will unite to blog about prematurity. So today we blog. We blog about the ones we love. We blog so we can make more people aware what prematurity is and that premature birth can happen in any pregnancy. . The goal is to spread awareness about Prematurity, which is still the #1 killer of newborns.

To get more information about prematurity and how you can help visit the March of Dimes website.

If you want to read Ryan's full birth story you can start at the beginning
and then go here for the rest.

Feelings

Feelings are hard to deal with sometimes. Not many days go by, especially now, that I don't think about how I felt after I gave birth to Ryan. After I had to leave the hospital without my newborn baby. Life had to go on though. There were groceries to get & laundry to do in between visits to the hospital. I will never forget the first trip to the grocery store one night after being with Ryan. Dean and I were in the deli line and who was in front of us? A baby. A Mommy & Daddy with their baby. Playing hide & seek and loving on their baby. I tried not to pay attention but it didn't work. I eventually started tearing up and had to walk away. When I went back to work, Ryan was still in the hospital. He was doing well and was expected to come home soon. My short term disability had run out and I wanted to save my leave time for when he came home so I went back to work. Just walking into someplace other than the hospital felt almost foreign to me. It was good to get out into a different setting but it was hard. Hard to deal with my feelings. I wanted to be with Ryan or just alone in general. So as I go through day to day life now, I try to keep people's feelings in mind. When I'm in a store, walking through the mall or at the doctor's office if someone is rude, looks sad or doesn't talk maybe it's because they are going through a hard time. Sometimes having a sign would be easier I think. This blog post really touched me so I'd thought I would share:

Seeing Past What it Seems

Post Halloween

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve updated the blog..yikes. Believe me I always, “think” about writing a post but then other things seem to get in the way. Household stuff, errands, work, sicknesses. Yep, sicknesses. We’ve all the bout of sinus congestion, runny nose & coughing. It started with Dean and then early last week I got it and am still feeling the effects of it. Then Friday night Ryan started with the snotty nose. Needless to say we stayed in all weekend. This is what part of our living room looked like (the other half wasn't any better--I almost felt like I should've called "Horders"--haha)

So far he hasn’t been coughing too much but we did keep him out of daycare today because of his nose and this morning he said his head hurt (headache). We are blessed in that my mom is still available to watch him on days like today (she still watches him on Tuesdays & Thursdays and takes him to PT & ST those days...again, such a blessing!).

To the reason I titled this "Post Halloween". Halloween weekend was so busy that we didn't even have time to decorate the pumpkins until the day after Halloween. Ryan had fun decorating his pumpkins with stickers and we put them outside in the flowerbed, which where surprisingly they still sit (I figured some kid would come by and smash them..at least our big one).

Prematurity Awareness Month

November is Prematurity Awareness Month and November 17 is National Prematurity Awareness Day. Our lives changed forever on July 18, 2007 when our son was born almost 12 weeks too soon weighing only 2 lbs. 13oz. I had always heard about babies being born early or with birth defects, but I was one of those that never thought it could happen to me. My doctor never gave me information about what could be done to prevent preterm birth or suspected that it could happen to me. More than a half million babies are like Ryan, and will be born too soon this year. To learn more about about the seriousness of premature birth, donate, or create a virtual band to celebrate, honor or remember a baby in their life visit the March of Dimes web site – marchofdimes.com/fight.

Each year, our family walks in the annual March for Babies. It's our way of giving back to the March of Dimes. Giving back for all the research that has been done to help babies born too soon have a fighting chance at living and to help with the future research which will ultimately help more babies be delivered at full-term. Our local walk is at the end of April 2011. I've already started fundraising because for reasons I will explain later, we will probably not be able to walk. But just because we might not walk, doesn't mean we give up on fundraising. I will raise as much money as I can every year. Because Ryan is alive & thriving today due to the advances from the March of Dimes.

Fall Fest at the Farm

We finally were able to take Ryan to the Fall Fest at a local farm this weekend. We go every year because it is a lot of fun and we're usually able to get good pics (in Halloween or Fall attire), let him ride the pony, ride the hayride, play in the Inflatables & pick out pumpkins. This year it seems we've had something going on every weekend and this was the only day we could go. The weather was perfect and Ryan had a great time as always.

riding the pony

posing with the pumpkins

a pretty decent family shot

on the hayride

Ryan loved the goats..he wanted to ride this one!

Happy Fall!

picking out his pumpkin (with my mother in law)

Here's my pumpkin, Mom

I have a couple videos I'll share in another post later..stay tuned.

Halloween 2010

We had a busy Halloween weekend which ended with Trunk or Treat at my friend's church and Trick or Treating in my parent's neighborhood. Ryan had a great time and really understood about Halloween and the fact that kids dressed up and asked for candy. We had a hard time deciding on a costume this year but he actually helped pick it out. I thought we were going to get him Buzz Lightyear but when he saw The Cat in the Hat, there was no convincing him otherwise.

At the Trunk or Treat, he got to play games for candy which he enjoyed.

there was even another Cat in the Hat

Then it was off to my parent's house for Trick or Treating

He did leave the hat & gloves on (surprisingly)

He had a fun time, esp. since Papa (my dad) came along

for the walk