Three Years Ago Today

Do you recall what you were doing three years ago today?  I must admit my memory is a bit fuzzy, but there is a pretty good reason for it...  I will recount what I can from that time.  At 3 AM,  my water broke and set in motion the scariest and one of the happiest moments of my life.  It seemed like I was having the same child again.  With my water breaking and getting to the hospital at the same time (2.5 years apart).  This time I actually experienced labour pains prior to them inducing me.  Once they induced me, everything was still quite similar to Lorelei's birth.  But as the night wore on, the OB became more concerned with the baby's health since each contraction was causing too much stress on the baby.  He ordered an emergency C-section.  I was quite scared by the prospect, but had the good fortune of already having an epidural (which was difficult to place and not working quite as it should but it did the trick - eventually).  I don't remember much of the actual 'birth' but do recall being worried about the baby not crying.  I kept asking Clayton why the baby wasn't crying.  It took a bit and finally the baby cried!  I was delighted to hear that sound.  As they were stitching me up, they brought Clayton to meet our baby.  I did not know what was going on.  The OB was telling me something about blueberry muffin top none of it made much sense to me.  Then Clayton came with the baby and this is what I saw.

He seemed so perfect to me.  What was the doctor talking about?  They did not give me much of a chance to see my son before they whisked him off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and me to recovery.  But they asked us all kinds of questions about our family history.  They spoke of how large his head is and whether anyone in our family has growths, etc.  I couldn't understand what they were talking about...his head didn't seem that large to us (have you seen Clayton's head?).  The next time I saw him, he still looked perfect to me.

Shortly after, they started going over all of the medical things they were investigating and showing us what they were concerned about.  We had a great nurse through labour and she came back when she heard I was being wheeled into the OR to see if there was anything she could do to help.  (The hospital was experiencing some flooding issues at the time - even requiring them to tarp me as they brought me to the OR.)  She offered to take photos of our baby for us.  In the one below, you will notice a large discoloured patch on the right side of his face which was a growth.  It was one of his tumours and it engulfed his entire ear. 

On visual inspection, at birth we knew of 4 such growths...but they were nothing the doctors knew much about, so they planned a biopsy and an MRI.  We were crushed that our son was not born healthy.  We were scared about a prognosis or finding one or even what it all meant.  I felt so alone, so isolated, so 'how could this be happening'...