The Princess Turns 17 Today

The birth of The Princess was quite memorable. PKR and I had decided to start a family, and found out in December of 1989 that we were expecting a baby.

We were both very excited, and one of our favorite things to do was take our big cat Lynx and dress him up in baby clothes and wheel him around in the stroller. He was around 20 pounds, so he was a good substitute!!

Lamaze class was also fun and interesting. I have very ticklish feet, and I swore PKR would never be able to massage my feet as they suggested. But it really didn't feel that bad. The lower back massages were definately my favorite.

As July approached and the temperature went up, the swelling in my ankles also increased. My doctor advised bed rest because of the preeclampsia I was experiencing. So I was now expected to stay off my feet.

I remember I had three places in our house that I rested. One was the couch in the living room. One was the hide a bed in the TV room, where I could watch TV. And the other was the bed in the downstairs basement where our computer was located. It was also very cool in the basement.

As the first of August approached, my doctor started talking about inducing me with Pitocin so I could go into labor. On August 6, PKR and I went to Glendive Medical Center, I was hooked up to the Pitocin, and nothing happened. No contractions. No nothing. So we went home.

Day Two, same routine. They hooked me up to the Pitocin. No Contractions. No nothing. So we went home.

Day Three, my due date. Mentally, I was thinking this is the day this baby needs to come out of my body. So they hooked me up to the machine. No contractions. No nothing...but wait. The monitor on the baby shows the heartrate is decelerating. They monitored it for a bit, then, around 9 pm that evening, after spending most of the day in that hospital bed, my doctor said the baby's heartbeat was decelerating, and we had better get it out, so we'd like to do a C-Section.

Here I am in surgery having a C-Section. PKR had front row seats.

At this point, any way of getting the baby out of my body was just fine with me. So I was prepped for surgery, and wheeled into the operating room, and at 10:10 p.m. our beautiful 8 pound 8 ounce baby princess was born into this world in Glendive, Montana.

PKR telling my dad "You have a new granddaughter."

I still remember laying in bed and having the nurse hand her to me, and seeing that beautiful face for the first time, those eyes looking up at me.

Gazing into my beautiful daughter's eyes

The Princess had an interesting first few months. She had a high red blood count when born, so they put her in an incubator for a while to stablize this. Then she got jaundice, and I remember it seemed like her poor heels were poked so many times in the first few weeks of her life.

The Princess in the incubator after she is born.

Then one day, when she was about 2 weeks old I think, I had her on the changing table and all of a sudden she stiffened up and rolled over. Well, even though I was new at this, I knew this was way too young for a baby to be rolling over on her own.

No, she was having a seizure.

I had been warned about this. But The Princesses episode happened a bit different than mine as a baby, or my brother. I remember that first day when the seizures began, holding her in my lap as her body stiffen for about 45 seconds, and then she would cry because it would frighten her so much.

We got her to her pediatrician, who put her on phenobarbital, which helps stop the seizures. I was on this medication the first year of my life as well.

The Princess had an EEG after having seizures.

Even though this condition was well known on my dad's side of the family, we never knew there was a name for it. Because of the imerging access to the Internet at the time, she was able to access medical data bases, and put a name on this condition, Benign Familial Neonatal Convulsions. It was one of the scariest times, those days of having a seizing baby, but with medication and time, the seizures went away and she was fine.

I can't believe 17 years have passed from our time as a young family in Glendive. The Princess hasn't had an easy time with life for the past five or six years, but I look at her now and what she has done, and she amazes me every day. Despite her problems with depression, ADHD, and other anxiety disorders, she has come a long way as she approaches her senior year in high school, planning on attending North Idaho College in a year and pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a performer.

She amazed me this summer as we worked together during the melodrama production. It was fun seeing her develop the character of Kacey the singing Irish lass, and the songs she sang in the review. And to see her face as she would come behind stage because she nailed the song just right, or made the audience laugh was priceless.

She amazed me as she sat and had us rolling on the floor in laughter as she told priceless stories from her week at church camp.

Happy Birthday, Princess. My prayer for you this year is that the beautiful princess both God, me and your dad see each day will look back at you in the mirror every morning, because you are truly a special and beautiful girl, our precious gift from God.