Welcome to Me and Mine!

I'd like to share with you my love for scrapbooking and card making.

It all started with a Polaroid picture.

The birth of my first child was not a beautiful experience, I was two weeks over due, painfully induced, labored for 12 hours and then rushed to the ER for a cesarean.  I experienced some serious complications because my epidural was not actually blocking the pain though my legs were totally numb.  I felt the scalpel cut into me once and I screamed, before I could explain there was actual pain, the doctor cut into me again, and told me to breath it was just pressure.  My heart rate was out of control, all kinds of alarms were going off.  They knew something was wrong and my pain was not blocked.   I had to be fully sedated before I'd even had a glimpse of Matthew, internal paddles were used to shock my heart, though I never even asked later if my heart had stopped or what exactly happened to me because as soon as I was in recovery and waking up the doctors explained to us our son wasn't going to live and all that no longer mattered.  As you can imagine I was still heavily medicated.  So hours later, not knowing how much time had passed, I woke in a dark room, by myself with the memory of the doctors telling me my newborn son would not live much longer.  I had no idea if he was still alive and I wandered out of the bed to find out.  I was unaware of the machines I'd been hooked to, I don't remember hearing the alarms as I removed leads, I was on a mission to find my baby. Using my IV pole to lean on I made it as far as the hall. I have a very vague memory of people rushing at me with what I now assume was a crash cart, I heard somebody say, "that's the patient" before I hit the ground.  The next time I came to, a nurse was in the room with me, without thinking I once again was determined to get out of bed , but she stopped me by handed me a picture of my husband kissing our son who was just shy of ten hours old.

I wasn't supposed to be allowed in the nursery where Matthew was because I had a fever, I don't know who waged a war on my behalf, but a portion of the nursery was set up so my bed could be wheeled in to see Matthew, for just a few minutes before transport arrived to take him to a hospital with appropriate neonatal care.  At 14 hours old, Matthew was wheeled away by two strangers, in a portable incubator, to a waiting ambulance and driven 45 minutes from where I would have to stay for three additional days.

I called the nurses at the other hospital every two hours (all that was allowed), and insisted my husband be there with our son, even though he was completely lost.  Each evening he brought me pictures of our son, he was a good size baby at birth, 8 pounds 4 ounces, with creamy skin, an angelic face and lots red hair.  Doctors, who I'd never even met informed us in a phone conversation Matthew was blind, deaf, retarded, unresponsive and wouldn't live to three months.

Eventually we were told he had Werdnig-Hoffman's Disease.  I was never comfortable with this diagnosis and argued with the doctors:

• dismissed a doctor because she kept referring to my son as a she (seriously, she didn't know a vagina from a penis, how was I going to trust this woman to treat my son?)
• another because he excitedly told me they would learn everything they could from Matthew before he died, as if he were discovering a new continent (bedside manner, fail)
• I went toe to toe with yet another because his feeding orders were making Matthew spit everything back up.  

I'm sure they thought I was difficult, but I really didn't care what they thought.   Matthew stayed in the NICU for six weeks, before we took him home "against medical advice" at 5 pounds.  It finally boiled down to if he was going to die as the doctors predicted, let him die at home.

One of the nurses, who had cared for Matthew often, who supported our decisions and who never told on me even though she knew I was sneaking into the doctors' lounge to study whatever I could find on Werdnig-Hoffman's during rounds, shared this magical advice with us:

"Take lots of pictures."

I don't think I asked her why, I don't think Steven did either, but she followed it up with:

"One day either you'll have those pictures to look back on or you'll have those pictures to show Matthew how far he has come."

I took her advice to heart and before Matthew's first birthday I had amassed more pictures of our little family than my parents probably had of all seven of us in the 50 years they were married.

Eventually I needed something to do with all these pictures...

and I discovered scrapbooking.