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Date Posted: 18:53:29 10/10/03 Fri
Author: Joanne
Subject: Time to share our story.....m

Well, I’ve known this is something I should have done a long time ago, but honestly, I was worried that my story would either upset someone or just be plain not worth reading much. But I guess I will just put my nose to the grindstone and get it done and over with. Here is our story:

Glenn and I have 6 children together and 2 from our previous marriage…and then Sam. That makes 9 – yes nine – children. No, we are not independently wealthy, no we do not have an extravagant lifestyle, but what we do have is a home that is filled with love, with laughter and with the joy that only children can bring into a home. For future reference, I refer to all of my children as being ‘our’ children.

When I became pg with our 8th child, we knew that that pg would be our last. It was a promise that we had made to each other, as each successive pg was taking a toll on the limits my body could physically handle. Labour and delivery were no problem, but it normally took me around 6 months to get back to my pre-pg weight. I did a lot of trying to figure out, during those months, what I could tolerate eating and keeping down!

This last pg was also frought with a little worrying, as I had high blood pressure and was being medicated. After an appt with our OB, he told us that he had expected us to have another child and it wasn’t worrying him in the least – the decision was ours and shouldn’t be based upon my high blood pressure at all. So, after a few months, we were blessed to be pg with our sweet little Hannah banana.

Things went well, for a while, and then complications began. My meds had to be increased almost every 2 wks – I was having trouble sleeping, but then would almost pass out in the evenings. I had terrible heartburn – something I normally only suffered with during the last month of my pgs – and my belly just wasn’t like it normally was with my previous pgs. Our first u/s wasn’t good enough (clear enough, which I knew was a sign of low fluid levels), so we were asked to come back for head measurements in 2 wks time.

At that u/s, the size of the baby was only days off what it had been 2 wks previous. Since I worked in the maternity field, I was reading the u/s tabs at the side of the pictures and knew right then that this wasn’t a little problem. The blood flowing from the placenta wasn’t as high as it should be, the baby was growing at the proper rate and was almost 3 wks behind in growth and I could make out only pockets of fluid that she was playing in. The added problem – she wasn’t moving much even though her heart rate was constantly steady at 140-143 bpm – and that was what worried me the most. My baby was only 20 wks gestation and was already showing signs of distress in utero.

At our next appt to discuss the u/s findings, my bp was way out of control – 200/100. I was having blurred vision in only one eye, I had trouble following what people were saying and it had been days since I had felt Hannah moving at all. Once the nurse knew what my bp was, the dr came in and told me I had to go and be admitted right away from his office. I was arguing why I needed to go home, so he let me go, but Glenn had to keep reminding me I was supposed to be packing and not emptying the dishwasher, etc.

Anyhow, with some blood work done that afternoon, I was told that evening, alone in my room, that Hannah had to be delivered because I had HELLP syndrome, which was fatal. I didn’t believe it, I argued to the point that I told him I would do no such thing. He phoned Glenn at home, who came right in, but I would not budge – I would not do that. So, after another 36 hrs of waiting for me to agree, the dr realized I wasn’t going to and sent me to a specialist an hr away. Once there and after about a million questions, I was diagnosed with the likely case of medication-induced hepatitis. My liver was showing damage, the enzymes were high – and all because of the meds they were pumping into me at rapid rates to keep my pressure down.

Thank goodness – that was all we could think of! We could have terminated the pg and it was repairable – how horrible that would have been! I was admitted again, meds were stopped, more were started and all was considered well – even the specialist thought that the pg would continue unabated until I neared my due date. At the level II u/s he wanted to do, as a precaution before leaving that Friday, the worst news was realized. The damage that my liver had tried to keep functioning through had caused a secondary disease – Small Blood Vessel disease had attacked my uterus. Hannah was not getting enough oxygen, was still not growing, not moving much and her fluid levels were dropping daily. The specialist told us the odds, explained everything and we opted to try to keep the pg going for another 6 wks, deliver her way early and pray for the best. We were also told that she likely had both Trisomy 13, 18 or 21, the first 2 of which are fatal – and we still held firm to our decision.

To make a longer story shorter, within 7 wks, there was little change – Hannah did manage to gain some weight, but not enough to survive. Once my bp was 210/124, we could not avoid delivery any longer – so at 27.3 wks gestation, I signed the papers to have a therapeutic induction performed. 3 days later, Hannah was born sleeping having passed away about 42 minutes before she was born., too little to survive.

A week later, after Hannah’s burial, our daughter Rebekah asked if we could adopt a baby. At that time, we didn’t know that having another baby would not be something we would be capable of achieving so we were both a little surprised at her request. Immediately Glenn mouthed to me ‘no’ and my immediate thought was that I could do that – so I said to Rebekah that I couldn’t promise that we would adopt a baby, but I did promise we would think about it. Little did I know what the future would hold….

Glenn was the toughie – he wanted nothing to do with welcoming another child into the family. His heart was still very raw, as was mine, but I felt so strongly that we were still meant to parent another child. I didn’t know if it would be a baby or a toddler or what – but I knew there was another member of our family still waiting to join us.

It took months for Glenn to finally agree to even speak with an adoption counselor, but he finally relented. He had prayed often during our pg with Hannah and had been given a vision of giving a baby a Name and Blessing at the front of our chapel. After asking in prayer why God had given him that vision if it wasn’t going to happen, he was immediately impressed upon that He (God) had never told Glenn that the baby in the vision was Hannah. As soon as Glenn got home, he told me about what had happened and asked me to call Jean the next day. And I did.

We had a 1-hr interview with her – and we all agreed that we should move forward. Jean was the only worker who had placed so many children with Ds in loving families all over our area, so we knew she was the worker we wanted on our side. The interview was done in May, our Home Study was done and signed by September and we then began our wait. After much discussion with our other children, we realized we had no due date to mark off, no growing belly to remind us daily that another child was going to join our family. Jake, then 12 yrs old, just said that we all take to take turns growing our new baby in our hearts instead – and that it would be much more fun to do it that way anyways. So, that was what we did.

We chose names for girls, for whatever reason believing that whole time the only gender we would ever be offered would be a little girl. In November, our yellow Lab, Chance, gave birth to her first and only litter of puppies (7), so we were kept really busy and hardly thought about our baby-to-come much at all! We were also having company coming for the Christmas holidays, so we put adoption out of our minds and thought we would get busy with being more aggressive with it once the holidays were over. Great plans, but not what was in store for us at all.

That New Year’s Day, we decided for the first time ever to have our dinner meal at noon – at around 12:35 pm, a toast was made to the new year, which was bringing a brand new baby to our friends (who had also lost a daughter) and hopefully to our family, too. This was something none of us would ever forget happening.

4 days later, Glenn drove them to the airport and I was receiving a call shortly before 11 am from our worker – a baby boy was born in northern Ontario, he had Ds, and we were interested. I must have asked her to clarify what she said a few times and what she meant by we were interested. In the end, the bparents were not keeping this baby, they had already left the hospital and signed him off to them – did we want this baby or not? I very quietly began to cry and said a very simple ‘yes’. Jean told me she would place that call back to the bparents worker and would call me right back.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do – number one, I thought we would get a girl, now we had a boy, number two, I thought the baby would be much older, this was a newborn and number three, no one was home to scream and dance around the room with! My heart was so overjoyed and I was bursting – so, I emailed Glenn to his pager with a single line….Congratulations my love, we have a 4 day old baby boy….

The next couple of wks were a blur – I remember getting numerous calls from our worker, from the Drs at the hospital where our as yet unnamed baby was, I called the hospital daily to speak to his nurses, who constantly were asking what his name was. I didn’t have a name to give them, so I told them to think of one and use that until we told them differently. About a wk later, we told them his name would be Samuel James…I thought I had lost the connection to the hospital, but it was just the stunned silence from his nurse. When I had told them to pick a name, they did just that – Sammy – so when I said his name was Samuel, she was shocked and instantly said that Sam must really be ours.

But there were so many other things happening – I was beginning to fret terribly about the fact that Sam might not really be ‘mine’ from Heaven. At the hospital, I finally told our worker why I was so quiet and she told me that if I thought he wasn’t really mine, they would just send him right back that day…now, it may sound strange, but it made me feel a lot better. When Sam arrived, we weren’t allowed to see him until all his old price tags were cut off and our new ones put on – so we had about a 20 minute wait. Once I walked into the nursery, I went right for Sam’s isolette – in tears, I could see the banner the nurses at his old hospital had made for his arrival to our city taped up on the wall. They had sent all his old charts, lots of notes about how much cuddling Sam liked to do with his nurses and his ped’s statement that Sam had better save some for the morning when he would come in, little notes in the margin at how cute Sam was, about his name that they had chosen and then the surprise that that really was to be his name. Notes about his new family, that he needed to be with in order to gain weight – and how much they would desperately miss him when he left.

When I first saw Sam, he was asleep – and all I did was reach in to touch him. After a few minutes, I asked to have him taken out and wrapped in the blanket that I had purchased for him that morning – that was done and I sat in the chair and held my breath…Sam was handed to me and I couldn’t bring myself to place him near my face. He was so absolutely beautiful, so incredibly perfect – he looked like our other children and I marveled at that miracle of life that was lying in my arms. Within a few minutes, I tenderly put Sam up to my face, terrified at what I would feel, or rather, what I wouldn’t feel in my soul – and with tears in my eyes and a trembling voice, I looked at Glenn and said “Oh Glenn, he fits” – words here just cannot express my relief, my joy, my gratitude…and within minutes, the realization that for as much joy as we were experiencing, there were 2 other parents just beginning their lifetime of mourning.

Now, some people have asked us why we felt we needed to replace Hannah – Sam is not a replacement for her. In fact, the only peace I ever felt about Hannah’s death was from something Rebekah said to me when Sam was only weeks old. We were in our van, driving back home from somewhere, and Rebekah (8 at the time) asked me if Hannah and Sam knew each other in Heaven and if they had spoken to each other. I was affirmative in my answer…there was a little silence…and then Rebekah said she knew why Hannah had left our family when she did. Curious, but not paying 100% attention, I asked her why – and Rebekah just said, matter-of-factly, that Hannah knew that Sam needed our family more than she did, and that after they spoke for a while, Hannah agreed to leave early so Sam could join our family.

From that exact moment, I have felt nothing but peace about Hannah and the short time she lived with our family. There is not a day that goes by that I do not look at Sam and realize how blessed we are to have such a special little boy. He is special because he must have been such an incredible spirit for someone to give a family to, he is special because he fits into our family, he is so beloved by all who meet him and he humbles me as a mother. His having Ds has never been considered a disability, has never been something we have cried over, nor been distressed about…and that doesn’t make it wrong if people do need time to adjust. It is just the type of family that we are – Sam is Sam, he will always be Sam, he will be nothing more or less than Sam – and if we were blessed enough to be his parents, then we have the responsibility that was given to us by his bparents and by God to raise him as best we can.

So, this may have gotten very long, but telling anyone about Sam has to include Hannah, for without her, we never would have him. We don’t believe that God makes mistakes, but we do believe that what other people would sometimes term as trials are just opportunities for us to grow as individuals, as companions and as families. In Sam, we have the opportunity to slow down, to see life from a very different perspective and to accept everyone for whom and what they are yet to become. We’ve learned that we still cannot tell the future, but we can sure enjoy the trip getting there. And all because of 2 very special children, who never fail to bring a tear to my eye, joy to my heart, a twinkle in my step and most of all, gratitude for the blessings that God has given to us.

“A joy shared is doubled; a sorrow shared is halved.” If the world only knew the joy that our children can exude, there would be no desire for any type of violence, nor would there be need for peacemakers…in the perfection that dwells within our children who have been born with Down syndrome, dwells God Himself.

J

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Replies:

[> Oh Joanne......what a beautiful story!! (m) -- Sheila, 10:25:01 10/13/03 Mon

Your story is one of following the spirit and letting God work miracles in your life. I have also been blessed with the miracle & blessings of adoption in my life:#1 I was adopted & #2 We adopted our beautiful daughter. The children that come to you through adoption don't just come trhough chance, Heavenly Father has a hand in it....I believe this with ALL of my heart and soul!!

I love your Sam, Joanne. I can fill his great spirit stretch across the miles & I have always felt what a valient little man that you have for a son. I love what your Rebekah said about your sweet Hannah....I can see Hannah saying that. Our angel children are very special and strong.

Thank you for lifting my spirits today because of reading your precious story about two of your beautiful children.

Love Sheila


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[> what a wonderful story... -- Heather, 21:19:13 10/14/03 Tue

What a touching story. We too hope to adopt a child.
It is nice to hear your story and know that your feelings
of love for Sam didn't take anything away from Hannah.
Thank you,
Heather


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