Tommy's Story~ Crashing into the world

I was 30 weeks pregnant and finally enjoying feeling pregnant. I was having a son that decided to name Thomas, after a good friend of mine. We picked the middle name Lee, because it is Rob's middle name. We decided to call him Tommy because, well, Tommy Lee happens to be the drummer of Motley Crue and Rob and I are huge fans. It's true! We named him Tommy Lee on purpose. Ironically, after he was born, we tended to call him Thomas more than Tommy. Not sure why that happened. But I'm getting ahead of myself. On with the story.

I was on the computer using instant messenger with a friend. We were trying to keep her phone lines open so her daughter could call. I got up to use the bathroom. Not ten minutes later, I felt wet. I knew my bladder was empty because I just went. I was annoyed that I had somehow managed to wet myself. I went to the bathroom and discovered my water had broke! I went from laughing and enjoying being comfortably pregnant to being terrified. My water had broken early with both Matthew and Brandon, but they were both 3 weeks early, not 10.

I grabbed one of Brandon's diapers and put it in my underwear and screamed for Rob. I quickly typed to my friend that my kids were on the way to her house as soon as Rob dropped me off at the ER. I called the maternity ward to explain what was happening and who I was. This was very, very serious. My water had just broken with a baby who would surely die of his heart defects if he was born that night. Half way to the hospital, I realized I didn't know where I was supposed to be going. It is a big University hospital with several entrances. They told me where to meet them and I was greeted at our car with a wheelchair and escort.

I was taken to an exam room where the nurse said if I had ruptured, infection was our greatest threat, so she would not be doing an exam. Instead, she did a litmus test of the leaking fluid and confirmed it was indeed amniotic fluid and by the amount, I had indeed ruptured. I was rushed to a room where I was hooked up to antibiotics, given steroids for the baby's lungs and was hooked to a monitor. Miracle of miracles, I was NOT in labor! Our greatest challenge instead was that I was a diabetic. The steroids pushed my blood sugars through the roof to the point I needed an insulin drip. Once an hour for 48 hours, I groggily stretched out my finger to be pricked to test my blood sugar. 48 sticks in 1 finger. We could have used others, but after the third stick it was numb anyway.

Dr. Shirali came to see me. He told me he had reviewed Tommy's echo and not to worry, that his heart would be able to hold out for a while after he was born, so we wouldn't need to rush surgery. That was a huge relief. I transferred to the antepartum ward and was put on complete bed rest. I was responsible for my own care, but had nurses on call if I needed them. It allowed me to rest because there were no 4 a.m. vitals. I took my own medications, my own blood sugars and stuck myself with my own insulin needles. I also took my temp every morning and night and recorded it. I was allowed out of bed for a potty break and a 5 minute shower.

My amniotic fluid continued to leak, but I had an ultrasound and a non stress test every day. As long as I stayed hydrated, my body continued to make more fluid. Our goal was to get me to 35 weeks. I didn't make it. On the night of September 24th, my back began to ache and I could not get comfortable. The next morning I went to the bathroom as usual but soon realized my amniotic fluid was more red than normal. A sign I was actually bleeding again. I called my nurse who alerted my doctor. The bleeding slowed on its own and I was told I was on high alert, and if any small thing became out of order that we would induce. I folded a towel through my legs and got comfortable in bed on my side to rest. My friend brought Brandon to see me and we talked about an hour.

When she left, I got up to use the bathroom and found the towel soaked. My doctor told me she felt Tommy would be safer on the outside than the inside and we would induce. I asked to call my husband and mother in law and asked what day we were inducing. She looked at her watch and told me to hurry up with the calls, we were going NOW. As luck would have it, I could not get through to anyone, so I started leaving messages. Rob called back and told me he was on the way.

I was induced at 33 weeks. The pitocin was started at 4 p.m. Sometime around 4 cm I decided to have an epidural even though I had never had one before. I got stuck in the spine 3 times, trying to get a spot that didn't feel like I was being split in half. I finally didn't feel the third needle and the medication was started, except I kept feeling my contractions and never got numb. For the next 3 hours, I squeezed Rob's hand. I could only lay on my side because there were probes attached to Tommy's head and moving spiked his heart rate. I was put on oxygen to help him. I felt every single contraction starting in my hips, up my back, around my stomach, then down my thighs. It was decided that I would deliver in the OR because Tommy was such high risk. I was to be moved at 8 cm.

I could only have 1 person in the room with me to deliver. Rob has a very weak stomach and nearly passed out during Matthew and Brandon's births with no complications. He passed the torch over to my friend and told me he would see me when it was over. I didn't blame him one bit! We made it to the OR and all of a sudden my body took over. I had to be cathed. I couldn't control anything and my contractions were causing me to push before I was actually ready. The doctor told me to hold on for just a minute more, that I could push at 9 cm instead of 10 because he was going to be small. That was all I needed to hear. I ripped off the oxygen mask and about 2 minutes later, my son was born.

I never saw him. He was grabbed by the NICU nurse and rushed to the adjoining room. All I heard was the most beautiful, lusty cries! I spent another 10 minutes or so in the OR and was taken back to my room, where I started to shake all over. It was the medication from the epidural leaving my system. It never numbed me, but it sure let me know it was in my bloodstream. An hour later, they wheeled the incubator into my room. There he was. He had tiny leads stickered to his chest, a line coming from his umbilical stump, and and IV. He was so little and so big at the same time. 4 pounds, 5 ounces and 16 inches long. I got to spend 5 whole minutes with him before he was taken to the NICU for his first echocardiogram. We were told we could see him in about 2 hours.

About that time, my mother in law made it to the hospital from KY and I was settled into my recovery room...right next to the newborn nursery. All I could hear were crying babies and my baby was in the next building. Very sad!

We made it up to see him, but could only go in 2 at a time. We were told that his echo showed his heart was "balanced". Even though he had a serious defect, his body had learned to compensate and he was doing remarkably well and could probably wait several months to have any surgery at all. We learned his complete heart diagnosis. Double inlet left ventricle, transposition of the great arteries, and Pulmonary stenosis. It was also said he had a VSD, but the reality was it was so large that truly he had just one big ventricle. A three chamber heart mixing blood with oxygen and without oxygen in one spot. It didn't matter that his great arteries were reversed because they were dumping into the same place. The biggie was the stenosis (narrowing) of the artery that carried blood to the lungs. That would have to be opened eventually. But for now, he was okay.

We also learned that pathology had looked at the placenta and it had ruptured. Had we not induced when we did, he would have died. This would be close call number one for us. We also knew the way he manged to wiggle out from the monitors during our daily non stress tests and the way he rolled away from the ultrasound probe that he was very stubborn. Stubborn is good with sick babies. It meant he was a fighter.

Life with a baby in the NICU was starting for us.

Tommy's Story~The Beginning

In less than 3 weeks, Congenital Heart Defect Awareness week will be here. The internet is all aflutter with upcoming events to raise awareness for CHD. I am no different in my efforts. My story just has a different ending. Many of you already know that ending, but not so many know the beginning. I plan to break the story up a bit, posting a little bit at a time because there is so much to tell.

So we start at the beginning.

We started talking about adding to our family near the end of 2005. I found out I was pregnant in March 2006. It was a Valentine's Day baby. At the time, I was between jobs when two companies expressed hiring me the same week. One was working as a cashier for a new hardware store opening in the area. It meant a lot of time on my feet and heavy lifting. The other was taking inbound calls at a call center. Because I was in my first trimester, I went with the call center so I could sit and take care of myself.

My first trimester was filled with spotting. Because my previous pregnancy had been high risk, I was overly cautious. My pregnancy with Brandon was a scary thing. I had a low lying placenta that caused me to bleed out if I over exerted myself, gestational diabetes, a preterm scare and finally a premature birth. When I started spotting with the new pregnancy, my mind filled with worry.

My doctor told me it was implantation bleeding and not to worry. Eventually, it tapered off and finally stopped near the beginning of my third month. By my fourth month, I decided to switch jobs and take the cashier job. It was right down the street and I could walk to work. I thought it would be good for my body to walk every day. I felt great! I took it easy on my new job. I took breaks and put my feet up and took care of myself. No lifting. Rob had also taken a new job in February and the boys were in daycare and doing well. We were a typical two income family working hard to raise our family and prepare for our next child. I was 4 1/2 months pregnant and feeling fantastic. As a matter of fact, I didn't even feel pregnant. That nagged in the back of mind, but I put it off to all of the changes in our lives. Then everything changed.

It was a Sunday. My mother in law was visiting from KY. I went to work as usual and felt fine. About an hour into my shift, I felt uncomfortable, so I took a bathroom break. I was bleeding! I notified my supervisor, who sent me home immediately. Once I was home and called the doctors, I was told as long as the bleeding didn't increase to lay down and keep my feet up and come in first thing the next morning, which I did. I had an ultrasound and baby was fine. Placenta was fine, blood work was fine, everything was fine. Except I was soaking a full sized pad in less than a minute for no reason. I came in every 3 days for another ultrasound and each time, the same thing. Nothing was wrong with the baby or the placenta despite all of the bleeding.

After the third ultrasound, the midwife told me the technician couldn't get a good look at the baby. I wasn't surprised. It took 3 ultrasounds for the tech to "think" it was a boy. He was a stubborn little thing. I still didn't feel pregnant. I was 5 months and never felt the baby kick. The ultrasounds at least let me know someone was in there. Since they could not get good pictures of him in their office, they wanted to send me to Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) for a level 2 ultrasound on the baby so they could check his heart and umbilical cord. Goody! Another ultrasound to peek at my little guy! I took my best friend with me.

That's the day my world changed.

We giggled with excitement as the tech started the ultrasound. Stubborn baby. Would I please turn on my side. Now the other side. Could I please pull my legs up. Now down again. Lift up the tummy a little. Push, pull, twist, turn. Somethings not right. It must be the machine. Let's move you to the next room and try again. Same scenario. More turning and twisting to get the baby in a good position. Aha! She had found the cause of the bleeding. A subchoronic hematoma. More twisting and turning. Finally, two hours later, she says the doctor will be in to talk to me. Oh, and it was definitely a boy!

I don't remember anything except a man in a white coat introducing himself as doctor so-and-so and telling me one side of my baby's heart was too small and his umbilical cord lacked a blood vessel. I was to report for a fetal echocardiogram. Now. No appointment, they're waiting. Wait. What?

We drove the two blocks to Children's hospital and reported to the 5th floor. They weren't kidding. I was taken right back. I found out a fetal echocardiogram is an ultrasound of just the baby's heart. Guess what? More push, pull, twist, turn. Stubborn, stubborn little guy!! Up until this point in my life, the only things I had ever heard about heart defects was Sylvester Stallone's daughter born with a small hole in her heart that was fixed. No details, just that she would grow up normal and healthy. I'd heard of murmurs, but didn't know what they were. I'd never heard the term Congenital Heart Defect. This was my 4th child, I wasn't a newbie at this. I knew the tests, I knew the statistics for Down Syndrome and spina bifida. Why all the hullabaloo over my baby?

After the tech finished the echo, my friend and I talked. Confused and a little scared, I didn't know what to think, except where did I go wrong? Did I overdo it somewhere in the beginning? Not enough vitamins? Secondhand smoke from someone I walked passed on the street? Two people walked into the room. His name was Dr. Shirali and he had his nurse with him. How gently do you break it to a mother her child could die? He was about to show me. Compassionately, he began to explain was a heart defect was. He told me it was nothing I had done and honestly, there was no explanation why. He had a booklet with drawings of different heart defects. My baby's defect was not in that book. It was too rare. Instead, he drew me a picture as he explained.

So, he'll grow out of it, right?

So much information to take in. There were options. We could do nothing. My baby would be born and we would take him home to make him comfortable and let him die naturally. It was called "compassionate care". What's so compassionate about letting your baby die while you let it happen? We could put our son through a series of surgeries that would reroute the way his body carried his blood to give him more oxygen. The first one would be shortly after he was born. My head swam. What about a heart transplant? It was not a good option because finding a heart that small that was a match was nearly impossible. Then I was given my third option. In the State of South Carolina, legally, I had 3 weeks to decide to abort the pregnancy. At that time, I would be 6 months. I told him about my history of preterm births. He told me the baby had to be born term or he would more than likely die.

How does a parent process all of this? Now I had to go home to tell my husband. He was devastated. I told him about the abortion option. Numb with grief, he left the decision to me. I started looking up my son's defect online. It took about an hour just to find out what it was. It really was rare. I read the medical statistics. I read about what to expect. None of it was good. My son would practically be an invalid for the rest of his life. I researched the abortion because I was feeling so lost and detached. I had never felt my baby move and now he had been given a death sentence. Should I just terminate and get on with our lives? I agonized over the decision.

And then the miracle that is Tommy, happened. Late in my 5th month, almost to my third trimester and nearing the end of time to make my decision, he kicked. I was pregnant! There was life in there! That little kick brought me so much hope. I knew I could never live with myself if I did not follow through with what we had started. Good, bad, life or death it was out of my hands and in God's. For the first time, I felt pregnant. I felt like I had something to look forward to. I started seeing a specialist with Maternal Fetal Medicine. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and was to start class in a few days to get my monitor and learn nutrition. Old news. My last pregnancy was diabetic too. Goodbye Sonic, Goodbye chocolate. I was 30 weeks into my pregnancy. Only 10 weeks to go!

So I thought.

Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Quilt Project

I don't remember how I first heard of the CHD Awareness Quilt Project. It just seemed like someone was always talking about their quilt block. I thought of submitting a request when Tommy was a baby, but he was a baby, he didn't have any particular interests or favorites yet. So I waited.

After he died, I looked them up to see what it was all about and what I needed to do to get Tommy a quilt block. I filled out the form with his likes and his personal information. There's no set time for a quilt block to be made. It just depends on when a volunteer is able to get it done.

I checked the page for a few weeks and realized it was going to be a very long time and moved on with life. I thought it might be a couple of years because of the long list of names. So MANY kids with heart defects and those were only the ones requesting a quilt block! Take a look at the honor roll on their page. It's stunning to see all of those names. Every single name is a child born with a CHD. Even if you don't read every name, scrolling through the sheer volume is an eye opener.

The morning after I posted my most recent blog entry, I lay down to take a nap as I do nearly every day. When I woke up, I checked my email as usual. I was not prepared to find the email telling me Tommy's quilt block was finished and a picture was included. When I saw it, I cried. I may never know who put together the most beautiful tribute to Tommy.

On the form, it asks for the child's favorites or likes, comments, etc to help make the block personal. Tommy was all about bubbles, Nemo and the color Red. I had no idea how those three things would pull together for a quilt block, but it did and it is amazing!

Everything is done by volunteers. If you would like to donate your talent, there is a link on their page with instructions on how to make the blocks as well as how to contact them. I have seen one quilt in person and it was breathtaking. Tommy's block is not yet on a quilt, but they will email me again when it is assigned to one. They will give me the quilt number and the position on the quilt. I hope to one day see it in person. The quilts travel all over the world and are shown at CHD events. If anyone ever spots his block on a quilt, I'd LOVE to hear about it!

Here is a picture of the beautiful block made for Tommy. I want to add one more thing. Since Tommy died, I have been looking for boy angels. Most of them have been cartoonish cherubs. When I see a picture of an angel, it's usually of a little girl in flowing robes and long blond hair. I wanted a picture of a boy angel! I've come across very few boy angels that looked angelic. If they weren't cherubs, they were just little boys with wings. Not what I was looking for.

I don't know where the volunteer found the applique of the angel, but that is what made me cry. Even down to the hair color, it's perfect!

In the Dark

Last night, as I tried to sleep, my mind wandered away from me. It fell to thoughts of Tommy and broke my heart all over again. I can only remember glimpses and moments, like little clips of time. I long to have minutes, hours, even days play back in my head. Last night, as I tried to make the memories stretch out into something more than a glimpse at a time, it struck me...

When August comes around this year and I am mourning the day he passed away, he will have been gone from this Earth longer than he lived on it. How can that be? Didn't he just die a few days ago? In my head it always feels like hours and years all at the same time.

I knew how sick he was when he was born. I knew what we were facing. I had prepared myself for his death so many times. Every day when he woke up was nothing short of a miracle. I had to make each moment count. I took so many pictures of him that when I put them all on disk, I have somewhere around 8 full DVDs at 4 gig each of pictures of him. Even so, when I look through them, I always wish there were more pictures. More memories.

Now that life has moved on and I have a typical job, I still keep up with other families with special needs kids. Lately, one of them has a child that may require a G-tube to eat safely. Looking back, I kept thinking how it wasn't a big deal that Tommy had a G-tube. I never understood why some people were nervous or felt bad around Tommy. He was just my kid and I was just being his mom. In all of my deep thoughts in the dark last night, I realized I gave birth to a son that could not swallow without aspirating. Could not breathe without a hole in his throat. Could not keep enough oxygen in his body without a machine. Whose heart was missing parts. Every day, I woke up and cleaned his body, along with caring for the extra holes he needed to live. I drew up medications in handfuls of syringes 3, 4 or more times a day and pushed them through a tube in his stomach. I hooked him up to a machine to give him nutrition and we went about our day and the machine softly hummed in the background. The constant buzz of the machine giving him enough oxygen to live. Counting exactly 24 links of blue tubing because any more or any less would alter the amount of oxygen he got.

Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. Cardiologists, ENTs, surgeons, Synagis and flu shots, and monthly deliveries of oxygen and supplies to keep him alive. HOW did I do it all? How did I make the time for the medical AND the daily? I always knew his life would be short. I could never imagine him going to school, much less as an adult. My heart knew we would be lucky if he made it to 5 years old. We didn't make it to 2 years.

Could I change anything to have extended his life? Doubtful. After all of this time, and more nights in the dark like last night, I've analyzed it to death. I've read the autopsy so many times I've practically memorized it. Even though the catalyst was the bronchopneumonia that caused his body to work so hard that his heart stopped, Tommy was a time bomb.

He was in heart failure when he died. With the state of his lungs, there was no way he would have been listed for transplant. His lungs were trash. Pulmonary hypertension, asthma, reactive airway disease, chronic lung disease. Each breath was a miracle. I only wish we knew. I had prepared myself so many times before to let him go. When they told me when I was pregnant that he might not make it when he was born. When he was born 7 weeks early and I watched him stop breathing in the NICU and the crash cart came. He was barely a day old, and I was still a maternity patient, listening to the babies cry in the nursery next to my room while my baby struggled to live. Two emergency heart surgeries, both with unknown results. I'd mentally prepared so many times to let him go, but when it actually happened, I felt betrayed.

I wanted one more picture. I had my camera with me the entire 5 days he was in the hospital for the last time, but he looked so sick I didn't want to bother him with it. I was irritated at the doctors on call for ignoring me. The more I screamed for them to fix him, the more they hushed me. I was just the paranoid mama who'd been in that room too long. Guess what. I was right. There WAS something wrong with him! He was DYING! There was nothing we could have done to change that. Prolong his life a little if we'd caught the bronchopneumonia, but for how much longer? Days? A couple months? Rob has been in heart failure for 2 years now, but he's a grown man with a structurally sound heart, not missing pieces with trashy lungs.

The dark brings up such drudgery. I feel like my grief will never go away. Hot tears fell on my face last night. I want to say they fell like when he died, but truth be told, I've not had my "moment". All of this time has passed and I have been sad, angry, complacent, and numb. I've blogged, I've wept, I've lay in bed hugging his things. I've never broken down. I've come close. The tears fell for a little while as I felt sorry for myself and missed my boy, but I've never had that moment where I thought the bottom fell out and I would writhe in a pit of despair.

I always felt I should feel that way. My son died. I should have crawled in my bed for weeks and shut out the world, but I didn't. Being a blogging robot came instead. I took pity on myself and my fractured marriage and put all of my energy into that instead of grieving Tommy. Maybe that was the only way I got through each day. I could fix my marriage, I could not bring Tommy back. I think if I had not had that diversion to hyper focus on at the time that I would not have survived his death. It would have consumed me from the inside out.

Even now, I have to blog to be able to get on with my day. Because today I will go to work, come home and it will be time to go to bed again. I will lay down and turn off the lights and try to quiet my mind. And eventually, the soft images of my laughing boy will fill my mind to lull me to sleep if I am lucky.

Out With the Old....

Here we are. New Year's Eve, 2009. In a few hours we will be ringing in the new year. I wishing for a year of hope and promise. I've made a couple of small changes so far, one of which is Brandon's medication regimen and the other being my hair. Okay, my hair isn't a small change. It's quite drastic! I do love it, though.

I'm liking the whole look without the glasses, so I'm considering contacts as well, but we'll see how that goes.

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I've been out of work since Sunday night. I woke up feeling feverish and not well, but I thought I could tough it out. Wrong. I made 3 hours into my shift before I had to call my boss to relieve me. I came home, ate a bowl of soup and went to bed. I stayed there for about 36 hours before I even had the strength to stand again, and even now, its rough to be up for more than 10 minutes or so. I kept a fever of 99.9 the entire time I was in bed. Once the fever broke, the coughing began. Let me tell you, I prefer the fever. Nothing like trying to use my touchscreen phone when a coughing fit hits me. I hit the wrong tab every time.

Rob was kind and took care of me while I was sick and kept the house tidy. Once I was able to raise my head for a while, we moved my laptop to beside the bed so I could keep up with the world. I have some wonderful friends on the Internet who've made me laugh until I cough until I can't breathe. Got to love a friend like that! I plan to meet up with them again later tonight for some New Year's Eve shenanigans.

Since I am home sick from work, I can't be out traipsing all over just because it's New Year's Eve. It was horrid enough taking Brandon to his appointment with his psychiatrist today, but it had been postponed three times in December, and we really needed to discuss how he is doing. The medication we had him on was adding to his aggression and compulsive behaviors and he has lost more weight that we are comfortable with from his lack of appetite, so we switched up the meds. But I digress. I was talking about New Year's...

So instead of traipsing around this evening with my wonderful hubby and kids, I will be enjoying New Year's Eve from the comfort of my warm bed and the light from my trusty laptop. The hubby and kids are headed to a family evening at church and then to a friend's for pizza making and to watch the ball drop on TV. The beauty of all of this is....

I'm going to be alone!

No kids, no hubby and complete control of the remote! I can't think of a better way to spend an evening. Okay, I can do without my lungs trying to escape my body every 20 minutes or so, but other than that, I am giddy with excitement trying to figure out which movie to watch first!

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Since I've been a very bad blogger and let Christmas slip by without posting, I wanted to add that Christmas was wonderful. Financially, I didn't think I would be able to pull it off, but at the last minute it all came together. I got the kids what was on their lists, but not their dream gifts. I was prepared to tell them Santa wasn't able to make enough, but at the last minute, my mother in law was able to get them each their one dream gift. Matthew's was a DSi, which is the newest version of Nintendo's handheld system. Brandon's was a Spiderman bike. The look on their faces was pure joy. Santa still lives on in our home for another year.

Here's to a Wonderful, Blessed, Joyful, Happy New Year!!

Christmas Spirit.

In 15 days, it will be Christmas. I don't know how I got to this state of mind, but I'm downright giddy! Our tree is up and decorated (thanks to the boys, who always do a wonderful job) and I can't stop listening to Christmas music on the radio at work. We have a tree up there as well, and lots of garland. I went a little crazy with the garland, but that's okay because my sister went a little crazy with the outside lights!

For those that don't know, I work in a convenience store. It's owned by one person and we have just 3 employees: the owner's brother, my sister and me. It's a very laid back job. No uniforms or name tags. I usually wear jeans and a ratty tee shirt because on my shift, something gross is usually getting cleaned. We have old gas pumps outside. So old, that they don't have credit card readers! People actually have to walk in to pay me. We have a lot of regular, neighborhood customers. We get to know them and they get to know us. New customers get confused. They will begin a conversation like "remember yesterday, I was telling you...." or "you just carded me this morning!" They're stunned to realize that my sister and I are not the same person. We do resemble each other strongly. The best part is when she's there with me and someone comes in the store and does a double take, realizing there are two of us and not just one person working all day long.

For the past week at work, I've been listening to Christmas music and wearing a jingle bell necklace. When I am in the mood, I wear reindeer antlers. The customers love it! I dress up for all of the holidays. I wore head to toe green on St. Patrick's day, complete with glitter covered hat. On Halloween, I wore a green wig and a glow in the dark tee shirt. Antlers aren't really a stretch.

Two days ago, I had one of my regular customers come in the store. He shook his head in disbelief when he saw my antlers, making the comment he hadn't finished digesting his Thanksgiving dinner yet and wasn't ready for Christmas. I told him I couldn't help it, I was full of Christmas Spirit this year as I cheerfully rang up his purchase. He laughed a little and said he'd probably walk in to see my sister wearing a Santa hat. I showed him our collection to choose from for her to wear. I think he said something about us being crazy as he left. Last night he came back.

He told me he was starting to get into the Christmas spirit and it was because of me. He said he'd thought about me that day and it cheered him up and put him in the Christmas spirit. I shared with him the reason for my silliness and love of the holiday this year.

I told him, last year, my baby died. The last thing I wanted to do was celebrate anything. I was numb and went through the motions for my other kids. The two previous Christmases were difficult because we didn't have family around and could not travel because of Tommy's complex issues. I told him this year, I felt free. Free from the grief that consumed me last year and I I felt like Tommy was giving me permission to be happy. I told him I would always, always miss my son, but now is the time to celebrate and to find the normal again with the family I have left. I could see from his face that he walked out of there changed inside. Even from Heaven, Tommy is still touching people's hearts.

I haven't bought one gift yet. I usually wait until the last minute because the boy's tastes change hourly. I also have no place to hide anything. In my last update, I wrote about giving of myself to my kids for Christmas. Our family has never experienced a typical Christmas, so this year, I am trying to give them wonderful memories. I'm 38, and can only remember a few gifts I got for Christmas as a child. What I do remember is the way the house smelled when my dad baked cookies and no matter what, I had an apple, an orange and walnuts in my stocking every year. I want my kids to be excited about what Christmas means than what they can get.

Today, as I was walking the kids to the bus, Brandon asked me if he could have another surprise today. I asked him what he wanted to do after school today and he couldn't decided. He just wanted it to be a surprise! We settled on baking a batch of brownies while we color pictures and make paper airplanes. I hope when he's an adult spending time with his own kids, that he looks back to the December when he was 6 and remembers parades, brownies and coloring with mom. I hope Matthew and Brandon both feel loved more than ever this Christmas and no matter what is under the tree, they have memories of how they felt and not of what they unwrapped.

Love and Time for Christmas

Christmas is coming up fast. There's not going to be much to go around, but I'm determined the boys are going to have so much fun that they won't notice the amount of gifts not under the tree. I've spent the past two days doing the most fun things I've ever done with the boys.

Last night we watched "A Christmas Story" after homework was done. We had a great time and lots of giggles filled our home. Today, they came home with big grins asking what today's surprise was going to be. Trying to keep a straight face, I told them we had to go to town to run an errand. They didn't believe me. (Of course there was a surprise!) We stopped to get a little drive-thru dinner and drove to a parking lot in town to eat. So far, so good...UNTIL...an older gentleman knocked on our car window and asked if the parade was going to go passed where we were parked. Busted. Tonight was our town's Christmas Parade. I'd been planning this for 2 weeks and I almost pulled it off. Oh well. The cat was out of the bag.

When it was time, the boys and I got out of the car to watch. I noticed the traffic was turning at the light in front of us instead of a block down, so I knew we would have to move if we were going to see. We didn't have to go far, just about a half block down. The boys were thrilled! They thought the parade was going great, the best thing they'd ever done until the first float threw candy at them. Holy Cow! You would have thought they were throwing $20 bills the way my kids scrambled the sidewalk to pick up each precious piece and shove it into their pockets for safe keeping. By the end of the parade, they had three full pockets each of candy, coupons for free cookies, pencils and Liberty crowns.

Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, fire trucks, classic cars, horse drawn carriages, floats and Santa himself. We stood in the cold for 90 minutes as the parade slowly crept past us (with a huge gap every 5 or 6 entries). The best part was when the Salvation Army rode passed and handed out hot chocolate to the crowd. It was cold! 38 degrees at 6 pm. I couldn't feel my toes by the time Santa rode by shouting "Merry Christmas".

When we got home, we dug the tree and decorations out of the shed, I assembled the tree and strung a string of musical lights and let the kids to whatever they wanted to the tree. It looks fantastic! Tomorrow, I head back to work, so there won't be any surprises for the rest of the week.

I don't have a dime to spend on my kids right now, but I totally believe in Christmas Magic. And overtime. I plan to get them each a few small things, but there won't be any giant gifts under the tree. Honestly, if I can keep up these awesome surprise days when I have days off, then by the time Christmas gets here, it won't matter what's under the tree. It will be about the special time spent with mom and dad watching movies, going to parades and whatever else I can dream up. I have 6 more days off until Christmas, with my last day off being Christmas Eve. I'm thinking one night can be cookie baking night, and another another night we can do a fun craft to create a gift for the grandparents. We can share the story of the Nativity another and I hope I can instill in them the reason for Christmas and not the gifts behind it.

My gift to my children is me. I can't wrap my time up in a pretty bow or put a price tag on what it is worth. My kids will still expect gifts under the tree, but I am hoping their hearts will be full of Christmas love well before the day on the calendar.