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.

My Birth--Separating Fact from Myth

This Tuesday I celebrate my 44th birthday. As I reflect upon these 44 years, I have asked by siblings to write about events surrounding when I was born. Inland Empire Girl's post is here, and Raymond Pert's post is here.

My assignment is to write down stories I remember from when I was born, and see if what I remember is fact or myth.

Whenever my brother and sister talk about my birth, it is always very positive. They were very excited to have a new baby in the family. They were 8 and 9 years old when I was born, so this was a big change in my family's life.

(I remember asking Mom one time if I was an accident. She very diplomatically replied, "You weren't an accident, but you weren't planned either." I always loved that answer.)

I was born on July 3, 1963. I can't remember what time I was born. Mom had finished up a year of teaching school, and was probably still taking classes to get her teaching degree.

From what I have been told my birth was pretty normal. I was born in West Shoshone General Hospital in Kellogg.

My brother and sister got to name me. I was named after Caroline Kennedy. But I guess they got a little mixed up, because my name is Carol Lynn.

When I was born I had convulsions. This is a hereditary disorder on my dad's side of the family called Benign Familial Neonatal Convulsions. I was put on phenobarbitol for the first year of my life. (I learned more about this disorder after my first daughter The Princess was born, and she started having seizures. She, too, was on phenobarbitol the first year of her life.)

I'm not sure how old I was when I developed pneumonia. But this was a very scary time for my family. I almost didn't make it. I was in the hospital and our next door neighbor Lois was a nurse at the hospital. If I remember the story correctly, one night Lois was the nurse on duty and she turned me a certain way, and the congestion started breaking up, and I started getting better. When I would hear the story, it always sounded as if Lois saved my life.

The first picture of me taken as a baby was when I was five months old. It is a black and white photo of Mom holding me.

I asked Mom once why they waited to take my picture until I was five months old.

"Because we weren't sure if you were going to live or die," was her reply.

I had various nicknames when I was a baby. One was "Pooh". There is a picture of me around my first birthday wearing a red dress and the called me "Firecracker". Maybe because I was born the day before Independance Day.

I may have been an accident, but I was never treated like one. I was always loved, and picked on and tolerated by my older siblings.

And I still am today.