I’ve been catching up with a LOT of old friends from high school lately and above all else I get asked what’s going on with Jaxon. It’s such a long story and it can’t be told in two or three sentences. So I write it here…

Jaxon was three years in the  making. In the “end” (the time just before we found out we were pregnant) I’d been told that I would not be able to have kids. I’d had blood tests for 12 months and hadn’t ovulated once…so that was that. No kids for Tim and I.

I was heart broken. But really, I think I had come to live with it for a little while.

It all started with a bit of cramping. And then sore nipples. I’m sorry, is this too much information for you? Tough. Ha Ha.

So one night Tim says to me about my incredibly sore nipples that I might be pregnant. But I think…no. I can’t be. That’s not possible. But of course, the mother in me jumped at the chance to do a pregnancy test. Not expecting that I would actually GET a positive pregnancy test.

But I did. I walked in to Tim, who was still sleeping…and told him. He said “that’s nice dear” and rolled over.

So the pregnancy was a bit tough. We had cramping for the first 8 weeks and got told we would lose it. That was just awful after all of that time to get pregnant and be told it was going to die.

But it all settled down. From 8 weeks to 27 weeks was all pretty normal. Until I got told I had gestational diabetes. It was that same day that my weight was just about to go over my “limit” and because of the diet I had to go on…I never went over it. I actually lost weight and it’s about the only time in my entire life that I have lost that much weight. While I was pregnant.

At 33 weeks Jaxon was still in the breech position. No worries. We gave him 3 more weeks, but then planned his birth via c-section anyway. I still went in to labor and managed to throw up all over Tim’s feet in hospital the night before it was all to happen. What fun.

Jaxon was born at 8.27am on the 24th of January 2007. Four weeks early.  He weighed 5 pound something. An America friend was kind enough to let me know that our nurse had converted it wrong so I have no idea what he was. But 2.86 kilo’s at any rate.

He had trouble in the first week or two. He went purple in his first few minutes and couldn’t maintain his body heat. His blood sugars would drop for the first few days. Despite the midwives milking my boobs like a bloody cow. My milk didn’t come in so he couldn’t get much out of me…so they tube fed him. I wonder now if they didn’t just like doing that to babies. Another friend refused to let them do it and he was just fine.

Jaxon was born with a club foot, a brachial plexis and torticollis. You might need to look those up. In the 2 years that Tim and I had lived here in town we had never been to Brisbane. We moved away from the city for a reason and saw no real reason to visit another one. But when Jaxon was born we started going twice a week for 9 weeks.

His foot was treated with little boots (ponsetti boots) and at 4 months he had a tenotomy and cast on for three weeks. Right now, you just couldn’t tell me which foot was the “bad one” it is so perfect and totally fixed.

His arm and neck on the other hand are a different story. The c-section was apparently a difficult one…what would I know? Morphine rocks!!!!!! But the doctors tore the nerves in Jaxon’s right arm so when he was born, and for the first 10 months or so, he could barely move it. We’ve been doing physio ever since we found it all at 4 months. Today he can use it. He can flex his finger’s now. While that seems like such a little thing, to me it is massive. He can flex his finger’s. They told me he wouldn’t and I would like to think that it’s partly my hard work with physio and other such activities that have brought him to this stage, where he can grasp things with his hand.

His neck, it would seem, is less about tight muscles and more about…the 12 bones in his neck. I’ve got a video on the video pages that shows you what’s going on in there. He’s meant to have 7, like the rest of us. But he has 12 and they’re not exactly normal. They tell me that nothing can be done and blah blah blah. But then, they told me he wouldn’t use his hand…ever. So anything is possible.

I think I mentioned earlier that my milk didn’t come in. It never did come in despite us trying and trying for 8 weeks. At the end of the day, when they said Jaxon needed X amount of milk each day and I was only producing X-400 mil a day and supplementing with formula…it just wasn’t worth it. So we gave up at 8 weeks and put him on a full formula diet.

At that point, or shortly after…Jaxon started crying. He cried all day and all night. Tim and I would beg the doctors to help us. They worked through a list of medications for reflux and colic and blah blah blah. Which all translated in to “we don’t really care” It turned out he was lactose intolerant. And all he needed was lactose free milk.

Friends and family that we told about the crying and lack of sleep all told us that we had a new born baby…we should expect crying and no sleep. But they didn’t come and see that it really was ALL day and ALL night. It was tough.

Without family about, and very few friends in a new town, I broke down. To be 100% honest with you, I sat on the bed one morning…the day before ANZAC day, and I planned how I was going to make the crying stop. It was not pretty. And I wont put it here, how I was going to do it. Because one day Jaxon might read this and I just don’t think he needs to know. What he does need to know is that deep down inside I loved him enough to call the hospital and admit myself to get REAL help. To keep him safe.

And that was that. The trip from there on in has not exactly been easy. But I can say that since that day, our journey has gone on the up and up. We’ve gone through hell. He’s had a lumbar puncture, he’s had his shin drilled. He’s had an MRI and CT scan and X-rays and an emergency ambulance ride. He’s had more medical procedures in his 2 years of life than I have had in my 30. Ooops. 31.

And now he goes in leaps and bounds and nothing is going to stop him. His physio teacher’s are just in awe of him. They just love him to bit’s. His little personality is just…BIG.

Day by day he amazes me. I am privileged to watch him becoming, as a friend explained it to me. Every day he makes me smile and laugh and love life and love being more than I have ever loved being in my own time. I thought I was happy (and I was) before he came along. And for a while I thought I would never be happy again…but now I just don’t know if I can hold all of this love and happiness and PRIDE in with him in my life.

Nothing in life compares to getting the honor of watching something YOU created and gave life to go from a blob of mash that pee’s, poops and cries…to something that has words and thoughts and their own personality.

To be continued…