January 3 marked E's 11th birthday, and as is our custom, we celebrated with a ridiculously chaotic birthday sleepover for many, many little boys. We had a great time (although I was exhausted the next day), but despite the fun, E's birthday gets me a little weepy every year. That's because the day he was born was the scariest of my entire life.
E was born at 37 weeks after a relatively uneventful pregnancy, but only a few hours after he arrived, a sharp-eyed nurse's aide likely saved his life when she noticed that he was a little blue around the mouth and nose. A quick check confirmed that he wasn't getting a fraction of the oxygen he needed to survive, and within moments, he was whisked off to the critical care nursery.
It turned out that he had a very, very serious illness called pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. Over the next two weeks, there were several points where the neonatologist told E's father and me that our sweet baby might not make it through the night. To make things even more complicated, our 28-month-old daughter came down with a raging case of chicken pox (which she called "chicken pops") at exactly the same time. Thankfully, we had tremendous help from family and friends during that terrible first month after E was born, because otherwise we couldn't have made it. I will never forget the care and love so many people showed us. So every year, on E's birthday, I say a little prayer of thanks for my younger son, and I remember what it was like to live through that hellish experience. It's those sorts of intense parenting crucibles that turn you into your children's real mother, I think.
Speaking of hellish experiences, here is a photo essay from the weekend's birthday sleepover.
I kid! I kid! It was actually a lot of fun, and I couldn't ask for a nicer group of kids. The only snafu came when I somehow got the idea that the Mel Brooks movie "Spaceballs" would be an appropriate movie pick for the young birthday revelers (I had never seen it myself).
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