Welcome to the World

In honor of our son's 30th birthday today, I'm delighted to share this excerpt from my book, Embracing Another Normal: Resilience Stories and Strategies for Raising Children with Disabilities.  If you read this newsletter, you know I'm a big believer in positivity, collaboration, and celebration.  Look for the good things and the world will surprise you. Andrew continues to do so!

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Maybe I can just hold my breath, I thought. If I’m still. And quiet. Kind of like a possum. Maybe this baby inside me will not be born four months too soon. Maybe if I play dead this baby will go back to sleep and stay alive. If I just try hard enough, I can hold onto it for a few more hours, even days, maybe weeks. Just maybe.

This is the movie that plays in my head whenever I think about the night of our son’s premature birth. The night we went to see my favorite movie, “Jane Eyre,” with its romantic tale and haunting score. The harrowing night when I went on a date with my husband, John, and wore my unfashionable maternity jeans for the first and last time.

It seemed like a perfectly ordinary night that ultimately turned so extraordinary. We went out for dinner. Then to the theater. Then later, to the hospital, four months too soon. Out of the ordinary by all definitions.

Sometimes, when this movie is playing extra loud in my head, I can smell the popcorn at the theater. I can feel the sense of urgency as we approached the emergency room. Often, when I remember the events that transpired, I can taste the fear that permeated our world for the days, weeks, and months that followed.

For me, there’s never an “if” in the expression, “If memory serves.” Perhaps you know how I feel. My memories of that night are always vivid. The strange bodily sensations I first experienced as I peeled off my jeans at home after the movie, when I thought the night was ending but it really had just begun. Something didn’t feel right. Not like when I was pregnant with our first son. Maybe I’ll just go to sleep, I thought—get up in the morning and everything will be fine. I remember being embarrassed about calling my obstetrician after midnight. “What if I wake him?” I asked my husband, not knowing we wouldn’t sleep for days after that call. “I’m sure you’re fine,” the doctor assured us. “But let’s get you checked out in the ER, just to be safe.” Then, at the hospital less than an hour later, the inescapable terror when he uttered these words: “This baby’s coming tonight. And it’s way too early.”

Andrew Thomas Burbank—our second child and a force of nature—was born at 2:53 a.m. on May 5, 1996. He came into the world like a tornado. Fast and furious and without warning.

In southern Ohio, where I grew up, we had lots of drills to prepare for storms and devastation. We hid under our school desks and learned how to evacuate to safety. But I couldn’t hide from Andrew’s premature birth. And I shouldered all the blame for it, despite the countless explanations provided by medical science, which said it wasn’t my fault. A mother’s love assumes it is. So I just waited for the storm to pass.

But babies aren’t meant to be born 16 weeks early. They are smaller than the size of an average adult hand, struggle to survive outside the womb, and experience a litany of challenges in their fight for life. We didn’t know any of this at 2:53 a.m., of course, but we were still terrified.

After his delivery, Andrew was rushed to the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). My husband and I had no baby to cradle, but at least we had each other. With John by my side, I lay in my hospital bed and wept for hours. Sometimes he wept, too. Other times, he gazed vacantly out the window, which scared me more than his tears. The look on his face made him feel like a stranger. The bare beige walls of my hospital room closed in around me, and the soft cries of the healthy newborns down the hall made it hard to breathe. I pressed my hand to my heart, to the pocket on my hospital gown that harbored a tiny polaroid picture of our one-and-a-half-pound newborn. He needed a name, they said, right away, in case he didn’t make it. They gave us the photo as a stand-in for the baby, who would remain in the NICU for months, if we were lucky. The tornado kept swirling around us.

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Even after three decades, the winds still often blow strong. But the weather is also sunny and warm a lot of the time, especially on May 5. Thankfully, and I don't say this lightly, life as Andrew's mom is not as threatening and scary as I imagined 30 years ago.

So today we celebrate Andrew's birth and all that he is and does as he grows and thrives and delights those around him.

Learning to embrace another normal, what we have instead of what we expected, is a journey. Please reach out if I can help you with yours.