Once Upon a Time

I want to tell you the story about where it all began with Jordan.  It seems like yesterday when he was born.  I don’t want it to seem like I did anything in the birth of our son and I certainly will not tell Lori’s birth story, but here are the Coles notes…Lori was incredibly strong, some things happened that I could never do and Jordan was here.

I actually had the honour of catching him along with the midwives.  That was possibly the most accelerating, scary and proud moments of my life since the birth of my beautiful daughter.  What happened next is something that I can’t explain to this day.  The first thing I did was pull his leg aside to see if I had a boy or a girl!  I didn’t really care, I would have been fine either way and I certainly did not need to know at that moment!  You will be happy to know that my stupid move was immediately followed by a midwife slapping my hand a way, looking me straight in the eye and saying, “how about we get him breathing first!”   Good plan I thought, but also, haha you just told me had a little boy, woohoo!!!  The next thing I saw was this little wrinkle between his eyes and he looked mad about being out.  I continued to see that wrinkle every time he got mad at me for the next 12 years!

The amazing thing to me now, was that the first 2 things I saw had nothing to do with the fact that his foot was twisted up against his leg, he had 2 webbed fingers and he had only 4 fingers and 4 toes on the right side of his body.  Later, I looked at his body differences with my mother in law and new something would have to be done.  I was worried about the unknown and I wanted to know what I should do, but it didn’t need to be done right then.  I just knew that at this moment (because this is the next thing I saw) both mother and baby were fine resting in our bed in our home and it felt great. 

Looking back now it is very strange that we had Jordan at home but when he was 2 days old we were in the hospital, not for his birth, but to start this medical journey with him.  The next year was filled with hospital visits and castings to start the many attempts of straightening his foot.  We fell in love with Jordan the moment we saw him, but we also fell in love with his body exactly the way it was.  It became normal to all of us.  His sister didn’t even seem to notice that it was strange that her brother always had casts or the fact that his hands and feet were different than her own.  

Jordan was unstoppable even then.  As soon as he could crawl he was pulling himself up on the handles of our cabinets to get to the counter dragging his casted leg behind him.  He had to work harder and do more to get where he wanted to go.  Now he has made a decision that I know most of us feel is impossible to make, but it is just one more hard thing he has to do to get where he wants to go.