The Day Owen was Born

My husband and I were expecting our second child in 2009. We had not done an ultrasound to see what we were having, so when we got close to delivery the doctor asked me what I wanted 'it' to be- I just smiled and gave the universal answer . . .

"It doesn't matter whether it's a girl or a boy, I just want it to be healthy and to have ten fingers and ten toes."

Of course, that's what I would have said. That's what any mother would have said. Mothers lie.

Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, red lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.  Every mother wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being so ugly.

Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart).

Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, and jump. She wants a child that can smack the ball out of the park and run so fast that the other kids are left in his dust.

Some mothers get babies with something more . . .

Some mothers get babies with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, behaviors they can't explain, an extra chromosome or a palette that didn't close.

Most of those mothers can remember the time, the place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small, suffocating room where the doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess when you didn't see the kick ball coming and it knocked the wind out of you. In some ways a relief to have a name to put with the pain, but at the same time you know that your world is about to completely change.

Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule him for a well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run in our family. Can this really be happening to us?

In that moment I'm beginning to learn  - there's no such thing as a perfect body.

Everybody will bear something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery.

I used to watch with keen interest and great admiration of the mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly, those mothers used to scare me.  How do they lift that child in and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day? How do they not cry for their child when it struggles or the child is in pain?

Those mothers didn't volunteer for that. They didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me, God! Choose me! I've got what it takes."

Well, I never imagined in a million years that I would be one of those mothers I just wrote about. 

I will never forget the day my second child was born.  The look on my husband’s face is forever implanted in my mind…when the doctor held up our new baby and said “Dad, tell her what the sex is”…His face told me two things…first, that I had just given birth to a precious baby boy and second, that there was something wrong.  In that silence a million thoughts ran through my mind.  I kept asking him what was wrong…and received no answer…I just saw the tears forming in his eyes…then, after what seemed like hours, he mumbled…”he has a short leg but he is ok”.  

The day after Owen was born we had x-rays taken and met with a Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon who told us that his condition was called Proximal Femur Focal Deficiency or PFFD for short.  Statistics are 1 in 50,000 births have some type of limb (arm or leg) discrepancy.  Basically, Owens’s right femur is only 1/3 formed and probably stopped growing around 2 to 4 weeks of me being pregnant. This was never detected on my ultrasounds since we were not finding out the sex of the baby my doctor really stayed away from that area. 

After my husband and I finally came to grasp Owen’s short leg we began to enjoy the little things in life and treasure our blessing that we did in fact give birth to a healthy baby boy who will see, hear, run, and jump just liked we hoped for before he was born.  Owen will just do things in his own time and in his own way.

Owen is not his disabilities; he is a beautiful child that does not know any differently.