The Back Story

Well, believe it or not it has been one month already since Cole was born. The time has gone by pretty quickly. Amazing to think of all that has happened over the last 9 months.

For those who may not know, or may have forgotten (how you could forget I don't know) there is a bit of a back story on how it is that we are here today with Cole. I figured I might as well do a quick recap here for documentation sake.

So 9 months ago Shelley and I started our journey together toward parenthood. Our first visit with the prenatal staff did not go as well as it should have and had us in getting an ultrasound at 8 weeks discovering the first of many complications. This complication disappeared in time but was the precursor to the many to come, the biggest of which was found at 19 weeks. During another (routine) ultrasound it was discovered that Shelley had an incompetent cervix - meaning that her cervix started to open too early (um 20 weeks early - yeah I'd say that's too early) and we were told could very well lead to a miscarriage. After a few weeks of monitoring it was decided that surgery was needed and a cerclage (fancy word for stitch) was used to close the cervix and hold the baby in - with this came strict or complete bed rest, meaning that Shelley could not get out of bed for anything but doctor visits and yes that means even staying in bed for the bathroom (although do you call it going to the bathroom when you stay in bed, you can't say I'm going to the bedroom...just doesn't make sense...anyways) for 8 plus weeks Shelley was on complete bed rest at which point she was given the freedom to use the bathroom, but remain in bed for everything else. All said and done over 100 days were spent in bed and just when the end was coming into view with the removal of the cerclage at week 35 another complication arose. literally right after the cerclage was taken out and Shelley was given freedom to get up and finally move about she began to itch like she never itched before. This was related to a very rare liver condition called cholestasis which the only know cure for was to give birth. while the doctors wanted to wait for as long as possible to induce labor the appearance of a rash a few days later prompted them to induce labor on December 13th 2007. After a fairly short but extremely painful birth (Shelley did it sans epidural - if you didn't kn0w it before NOW you know it for sure - Shelley is a bad ass) Cole was Born on December 14th, but not without matching mom for drama. He was born with the cord around his neck for starters, which led to his heart beat to be low at first which freaked the Doctors out since he was considered a preemie (by literally 22 hrs) and this combination landed him in the high observation nursery for one week in an incubator. This was a long and difficult week not because of his condition as much as the bull shit we had to deal with concerning the hospital. . As you can see it was a long 9 months to get here and this is only the shortened version, if you ever want to hear the entire saga in full detail I would recommend committing yourself first because it will blow your mind. All of this I will say was made so much easier because of all of the support given by our friends and family and i can not thank them enough for all that they did to help out. we are home now for three weeks and everything is good, Cole is gaining weight, sleeping lots and pooing like it is his only job - well I guess it is. Shelley is feeling better than she did before pregnancy even and life feels good.