Happy Birthday Owen!

YAY!!! Happy Birthday my beautiful (and very manly) boy. This is what we were doing one year ago today...

One Year Ago Today

Today is not Owen's Birthday. Quite the opposite. Once year ago today we heard the words "Your son will die." It's a pretty emotional day for me. One year ago today: 10:00 am - Dan and I were getting ready to go to the doctor's office for an ultrasound. We were so excited. I was in my 38th week and couldn't wait to see how Owen was doing. 12:30 pm - By this time, Dan and I had seen Owen and were relieved that he was still a boy! Funny, but our biggest fear going into the ultrasound was that they had gotten the sex of the baby wrong. Dan left the doctor's office to go to work while I stayed for a check up with the doctor. When the doctor walked into the room and I was excited to talk about how the baby was doing. I quickly became alarmed by the look on her face. "Well," she said, "The ultrasound showed some abnormalities. Owen's arms, legs and chest, are measuring small. We are not sure what this means at this point so we would like you to see the perinatologist. We think that it would be best if you see her today." She told me that it would be a good idea to call my husband and have him come back to the hospital. 2:30 pm - I called my husband in a panic. "Something's wrong! Something's wrong!" I could barely talk through the sobbing. I thought to myself, what if Owen is a dwarf? That was the absolute worst thing I could have imagined. 'He look strange and people will make fun of him,' I thought. I didn't realize that it wasn't even close to the worst thing that could happen. I called my mother. I'll never forget the sound of her voice when I told her something was wrong. The wait to see the perinatologist was agonizing. When we were finally called in, the doctor did another ultrasound. The exact discussion was a blurr. I remember hearing "lethal" and some some term relating to his skeleton. Lethal. The severity of the situation dawned on me. "Will our baby die?". "Yes, your son will die." I remeber crying out. It was a primal, guttural cry. That's the only way I can describe it. It's the sound people make when their world comes crashing down. At 2:52 pm exactly one year ago, Dan and I thought our son would die. 7:00 pm - One year ago at this time, most of our immediate and close extended family had been told the devestating news. Everbody was as heartbroken as we were. My parents came over and cried with us. I had never seem as sad as on that day. Dan and I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating tears and silence. We bargained with God and promised that we would be better people if he let our son live. We prayed that our U of M appointment the next day would prove our diagnosis wrong.

Coming soon...

Video of Owen walking on his walker all by himself! The crawling thing is sooooo last week!

Movin'

And so it begins. Owen is officially on the move. Gone are the days when we could lay him in the middle of the floor and walk away. Gone are the days when our house seemed clean enough for a baby! Now that Owen is crawling around, everything on the floor is now on his clothes and let me tell you, I am horrified by the poor performance of our vaccuum cleaner (yeah...uuhh...it's the vaccuum cleaners fault). On that note, babies make surprisingly efficient mops. Anyways, Owen is crawling, crawling, crawling! He's still army crawling for now. Although, I have my doubts that he will ever get up on his hands and knees due to the simple physics of the whole thing. His legs seem almost too short to bend under. I'm becoming increasingly aware of certain looks that I'm getting when I tell people that Owen is crawling. "How old is he?" they ask. When I tell them he's almost a year, the "He's not walking yet?" look appears. I'm sure many other mothers whose child is not hyper-advanced has experienced this look (dare I say we have all given this look at one point as well?). I'm not too worried about it. It's just an observation. Occasionally, when I have the energy, I will let people know that Owen is a dwarf. Most of the time however, I will smile polietly and pretend to marvel at the fact that this person's 3year old speaks fluent Spanish. But I digress... He is babbling and moving and generally in a great mood all of the time. His year birthday is coming up and like most mothers facing this milestone, I can't believe it's been a year! I've been spending more time on the Parents of Little People Group site. I've meet some great people. One of those people is Sarah Laurin who lives in the Dexter/Ann Arbor area. Her daughter Kaela was born with Metatrophic Dysplasia, one of the most rare forms of dwarfism. She also has a blog that she has allowed me to share. The Laurins. She is just gorgeous! Owen has dibs! Just kidding (but not really). Up to no good Too early for braces? Goofball. Just like mom. Bad hair day.

Translator

I completely stole this idea from Tonya so at least I can give credit where credit is due. You will notice that I've added a translator to my blog. This is mainly for a woman in Korea who reads my blog. I hope this will help ease the language barrier for her so that we can relate to each other simply as mothers of children with dwarfism.

Wool's mom, let me know if this works!

Owen and Drew - Together again!

Being the amazing daughters we are, my sister and I bought my mother tickets to see the Lion King for her birthday. But that wasn't even the best part of the gift. The real gift was... that Anne and I would go see it with her! Isn't my mom the luckiest mom in the world!? We are truly altruistic gift givers. Pure motives or not, our gift did get my sister and my nephew Drew from Michigan to Florida for 5 whole days! Seeing Anne and Drew is always very bittersweet because right from the beginning, it's hard not to think about the fact that they have to leave. My sister and I never fathomed the idea that we would be raising our children 1000's of miles apart from each other. Not being able to see her and Drew everyday is awful. It's almost easier when I don't see him for a long period of time. Drew is as big as Owen is small. We have the two extremes of the spectrum in one family. What is funny however is that sitting, they are almost the same height. When they are standing side by side is when you can really see the differences. I did have a little breakdown during one of those instances. Drew and Owen were standing naked next to each other and the skeletal dysplasia just seemed very evident in Owen. His hips looked turned in, his shoulders seemed rounded, his legs were very obviously shorter. I don't get the chance to carefully compare his body to other kids his age (not that I really have a deep desire too) and it was a little jarring to have his differences seem so pronounced to me. Drew and Owen seemed to get on pretty well. I don't think Owen quite knew how to take Drew and all his energy. Drew is crawling machine and nothing, including Owen, was going to get in the way. At one point, Owen had Drew's knee marks on his stomach. Drew also seemed to enojoy patting Owen on the head. Everyone exept for Owen found it hilarious. Drew is an absolute riot! He babbles and shouts and screams. He is constantly bursting out with strange noises. I also can't believe how smart this kid is. He says "light" (or "ite" in babyspeak) and actually points to a light! He also calls all males "dada", and anything resembling an animal "dodo" (meant to be "dog"). And, in order to further embarrass Owen, Drew saved a couple of firsts for his visit home. He said "Hi" for the first time and also clapped his hands. Speaking of embarrassing your family members. My sister pulled a big no no. She came home looking really good. I had heard the rumor that Anne had lost all her baby weight and then some but I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. To add insult to injury - she was tan. She sucks. Aside from the constant raging jealously about how great my sister looked, it was an awesome visit!. Everyone needs to put "see the Lion King on Broadway" on their top 10 list of things to do before they die. It was incredible. I will only say, the very first scene had my mother, my sister and I in tears. It was that powerful.

The Johnson Family

I have been corresponding with Katie Johnson from Dallas for a while now. Her son Cole also has achondroplasia. He is absolutely adorable as you will see and you should have all seen his pirate costume for Halloween! Katie are also bonded as former members of greek life (not the same sorority though)! She has also started a blog thank goodness so that we can all keep up. Hopefully she does a better job than I do! Thank you Katie and Johnson family for letting me at your link.

Johnson Family Journey

Speaking of not posting in a while - I promise to post this weekend! I will tell you all about my sister and my nephew Drew's visit to Michigan!