Happy Birthday Raelynn!

This is my daughter, Raelynn. Tomorrow is her birthday. She will be eight years old. Where has the time gone? Normally, I would post this on her birthday, but tomorrow night is the first night of my graduate class this semester and I'm sure I won't have the time.



Raelynn is a very imaginative and happy person. She loves dressing up, playing with her dolls, and as of late, being fancy. I'm not really sure what the entails, but it's a state of mind in which she continues to strive. She tells jokes that make no sense and draws pictures of me with long, curly blonde hair--I'm a brunette.



Her arrival into this world is a day I won't soon forget. Raelynn was due on February 26th and for some strange reason, I was convinced that she would be born on March 2nd. Neither of those things happened. Basically without going into too much detail, I woke at 5:00 AM on January 11th and went to the bathroom. Something didn't feel right, and I suspected that my water was leaking. I called the doctor and since he was at the hospital, he told me to meet him there. I must have been deluding myself because I really thought that I'd be back to work that morning. I called my teacher friend Debbie, and told her that I was going to the doctor and that I'd be back soon. I called the office secretary and told her too, but since I have this crazy notion that missing work is bad, I convinced them both that I'd be just a little late at school. Debbie offered to watch my students.



I didn't make it back to school.



The doctor confirmed what I already suspected, my water was leaking. He felt that the best course of action would be for me to be airlifted to the nearest hospital with a neo-natal intensive care unit, which happened to be 165 miles away. He wasn't sure if Raelynn would need special care once she was born and he didn't want to take any chances. David wasn't able to fly with me, he had to drive it and hope he made it there before she was born. The doctor at the hospital gave me medication to stay off contractions and I was assigned bed rest. He took me off the medication the next day.... and you guessed it, it became Raelynn's birthday.



Of course she was born via emergency C-section. She was 3 pounds and 15 ounces and 16 1/2 inches long. Most Baby Alive dolls are bigger than she was. Thankfully the Lord watched over us because she had no complications except not having lots of baby fat. They took care of that by hooking her to many machines and pumping liquid fat into her by IV. She left the hospital two weeks later weighing 4 pounds and 7 ounces.



There was a time that I doubted I would even have a child and when I look at her now, I can hardly believe that was my state of mind. I think I was worried that I wouldn't be a good parent and that I would "mess her up." I came to the conclusion that all parents mess up their kids (but they don't mean to) and that what matters is that your parents didn't set out to do it. They just made mistakes that we all make. They did the best they could at the time.



I'm very blessed to be her mother and can't imagine life without her. When I look at her I can't help but think, "Man, David and I make great looking babies!"



Happy Birthday Puddin'!!! Momma loves you so much!