My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 3: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes the Baby in The Baby Carriage.....
.....or seven to be exact. At least that's all the further we will be at the end of this blog.
So, we left off with me just returning home from working as a model in Tokyo - 18 years of age. I stepped of a plane into Oregon just two days before Christmas, 1998. The holiday, and New Year were a blurr of jet lag, and intense questions from every angle about my recent trips and my upcoming marriage. Being a VERY private person, this was basically torture.
I had had enough traveling for a while and was ready to be a homebody for a good long time - its a good thing, because although I didn't know it at the time, the next ten years would consist of cleaning house and having babies, mostly getting out only to visit family and do the grocery shopping.
In February I was married to the man I'd been in a relationship
with for three years. H
e was a bit older, 26 to be exact, and I'd met him at.....well, he was my youth pastor. Odd as that seems now, 
it seemed exactly the right step to take at the time, and I still believe it was.
Our marriage, like many, didn't start off to amazingly. We got pregnant on the honeymoon, and returned home to our one of a kind church of a house - which consisted of a rotten roof sitting on walls stripped down to the studs. There wasn't even a kitchen, but there was a tub - and that's where I did the dishes fo
r the first three months or so. The plan was to fix the place up into a house and sell it. (NOTE to reader: We still live there, and although it's still a work in progress, it is much more than a rotten roof on studs, and even has a decent kitchen :)
I, being young and in love, wanted to spend all of my time with my new husband - and he, being older and having grown accustomed to being single, was too busy working and doing the things he liked best to attend to my wants and needs. I was 18, pregnant, and alone, with nothing to do but sit at home and wish I were somewhere else.
And Then...
...Our Family Began to Grow
And Grow...
And Grow Some More...
Between November 1999 and December 2008, we had seven children - and for the first six years and five children of that, the old church house had no means of heat. So for 9 months out of the year we all lived in one unfinished bedroom, that we desperately tried to heat with a space heater. We did everything in there; sleep, live, and eat our meals.Its amazing for me now, to think of what I went through then, to make a meal for our family. It consisted of me cooking in our unheated kitchen - which was so cold during the winter months that I could not feel my fingers by the time I'd finished the meal - upon which I returned to our bedroom, laid a blanket on what floor space was left between all of the beds and dressers, then sat on the floor with our family treating the blanket like a table, and we ate. Generally we ate right out of the pans, because the thought of carting all those dishes back and forth from bedroom to cold kitchen, and then washing them in the cold was unbearable. I'd like to say these were the hardest times of our lives, but being such a stubborn person, it was going to take even more to break the prideful person that I was (don't worry I'll tell you all about it in part 3 of this series.)
During these 10 years of marriage and babies my husband and I owned and operated a small construction company. At the time, I thought we were poor. But now, looking back, I realize we just didn't have nice things. We were able to pay the bills for the most part, and we always had food on the table. I would later learn what "poor" really meant.
I feel as if this portion of my story would not be complete if I did not share with you the motherly pain I experienced over my son Titus.
Titus was a beautiful baby, who at birth weighed 12 lbs (that's huge for those of you not versed in the typical weight of newborns). To me, he was perfect and normal. He had a few small issues in the hospital after his delivery, but nothing that wasn't quickly patched up through and IV and medication.
We brought him home, and loved him, and at 2 weeks of age, he got very ill, so he and I returned to the hospital where he was kept on IVs and respirators for the next 8 days. It was during that 8 day stay, that our pediatrician came to me and told me that he thought Titus h
ad a genetic disorder...something called Beckwith-Wiedemann. I'd never heard of the disease, but didn't really care, because all I could think of while he spoke was: My son is perfect, my son is perfect, I'm not going to cry, he will be fine. The doctor proceeded to tell me that children with Beckwith-Wiedemann often times suffer from mental retardation, and those with hemihyperplasia (which Titus had) had a very high risk of contracting cancer of the liver, or wilms tumor in the kidney. Both are cancers with no symptoms, and are very aggressive. Because of this, from the time he was born until the age of 4, he experienced a blood draw every 6 weeks, and from birth until 7, he was due for an ultrasound every 12 weeks.
For the duration of Titus's first 7 years of life, I refused to treat him as anything but a perfectly functioning little boy. I felt that if I treated him like he was perfectly normal then he would be perfectly normal. We made sure to give him every opportunity to do everything that our other children did, and at a very young age, he and Beth (our daughter who is 14 months his elder) became very close friends, which helped Titus to grow immensely.
Never once during this did I cry or whine or even worry that he may contract cancer, or be mentally slow, but then......
Titus turned 7.
The testing stopped.
And he was Perfect!
Suddenly all the emotions that I had refused to allow myself feel for so long surfaced. I became an emotional wreck any time I spoke about Titus - and I could commonly be caught crying uncontrollably in my car. I cried all the tears of fear that as a mother I should have cried when he was sick. The tears I refused to cry when I was hooking him up to respirators for months at home while he was an infant. The tears and fear I refused to experience when I carted 5, and 6, and 7 children with me to have his blood drawn and his ultrasounds done for seven years. And the tears of fear I should have cried to think that my child would likely be retarded, and possibly even die as a young boy.
That's a lot of tears to catch up on. But mostly I cried because my little boy was okay, and was going to be okay and that made me so happy. Titus is still doing great, and will be eight this coming March. :)
As many of you know, we now have 8 beautiful babies, but the eighth isn't born until the the third part of this story. For now this is where we'll end.
Life is All Surreal.
Trials and suffering build character in a person, they may be hard to experience, but the good things in life wouldn't be so pleasant if you'd never experienced any pain.
MJB
Find the rest of this series here:
Previous post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
Next Post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
My life as it Pertains to me Part 5
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 6
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 7
So, we left off with me just returning home from working as a model in Tokyo - 18 years of age. I stepped of a plane into Oregon just two days before Christmas, 1998. The holiday, and New Year were a blurr of jet lag, and intense questions from every angle about my recent trips and my upcoming marriage. Being a VERY private person, this was basically torture.
I had had enough traveling for a while and was ready to be a homebody for a good long time - its a good thing, because although I didn't know it at the time, the next ten years would consist of cleaning house and having babies, mostly getting out only to visit family and do the grocery shopping.
In February I was married to the man I'd been in a relationship
with for three years. H
e was a bit older, 26 to be exact, and I'd met him at.....well, he was my youth pastor. Odd as that seems now, 
it seemed exactly the right step to take at the time, and I still believe it was.Our marriage, like many, didn't start off to amazingly. We got pregnant on the honeymoon, and returned home to our one of a kind church of a house - which consisted of a rotten roof sitting on walls stripped down to the studs. There wasn't even a kitchen, but there was a tub - and that's where I did the dishes fo
r the first three months or so. The plan was to fix the place up into a house and sell it. (NOTE to reader: We still live there, and although it's still a work in progress, it is much more than a rotten roof on studs, and even has a decent kitchen :)I, being young and in love, wanted to spend all of my time with my new husband - and he, being older and having grown accustomed to being single, was too busy working and doing the things he liked best to attend to my wants and needs. I was 18, pregnant, and alone, with nothing to do but sit at home and wish I were somewhere else.
(In all fairness to him - I was a bit of a spoiled brat at this point in my life, so I don't blame him for not wanting to be around much.)
And Then...
...Our Family Began to Grow
And Grow...
And Grow Some More...
Between November 1999 and December 2008, we had seven children - and for the first six years and five children of that, the old church house had no means of heat. So for 9 months out of the year we all lived in one unfinished bedroom, that we desperately tried to heat with a space heater. We did everything in there; sleep, live, and eat our meals.Its amazing for me now, to think of what I went through then, to make a meal for our family. It consisted of me cooking in our unheated kitchen - which was so cold during the winter months that I could not feel my fingers by the time I'd finished the meal - upon which I returned to our bedroom, laid a blanket on what floor space was left between all of the beds and dressers, then sat on the floor with our family treating the blanket like a table, and we ate. Generally we ate right out of the pans, because the thought of carting all those dishes back and forth from bedroom to cold kitchen, and then washing them in the cold was unbearable. I'd like to say these were the hardest times of our lives, but being such a stubborn person, it was going to take even more to break the prideful person that I was (don't worry I'll tell you all about it in part 3 of this series.)
During these 10 years of marriage and babies my husband and I owned and operated a small construction company. At the time, I thought we were poor. But now, looking back, I realize we just didn't have nice things. We were able to pay the bills for the most part, and we always had food on the table. I would later learn what "poor" really meant.
I want to point out here, that I am not whining or complaining about the random paths of my life thus far - in actuality I am incredibly thankful for them, and wouldn't trade them for anything. I have become such a better person because of the things I've been through - and during the midst of it, I was never aware that it was not easy - because it was a challenge to overcome, and I live for overcoming challenges.
I feel as if this portion of my story would not be complete if I did not share with you the motherly pain I experienced over my son Titus.
Titus was a beautiful baby, who at birth weighed 12 lbs (that's huge for those of you not versed in the typical weight of newborns). To me, he was perfect and normal. He had a few small issues in the hospital after his delivery, but nothing that wasn't quickly patched up through and IV and medication.
We brought him home, and loved him, and at 2 weeks of age, he got very ill, so he and I returned to the hospital where he was kept on IVs and respirators for the next 8 days. It was during that 8 day stay, that our pediatrician came to me and told me that he thought Titus h
ad a genetic disorder...something called Beckwith-Wiedemann. I'd never heard of the disease, but didn't really care, because all I could think of while he spoke was: My son is perfect, my son is perfect, I'm not going to cry, he will be fine. The doctor proceeded to tell me that children with Beckwith-Wiedemann often times suffer from mental retardation, and those with hemihyperplasia (which Titus had) had a very high risk of contracting cancer of the liver, or wilms tumor in the kidney. Both are cancers with no symptoms, and are very aggressive. Because of this, from the time he was born until the age of 4, he experienced a blood draw every 6 weeks, and from birth until 7, he was due for an ultrasound every 12 weeks.
Now I know there are parents out there, that have gone through sooo much more with their children, and my heart truly goes out to them. I'm not looking for sympathy with my story - but rather trying to share the person I am because of what I've been through personally.
For the duration of Titus's first 7 years of life, I refused to treat him as anything but a perfectly functioning little boy. I felt that if I treated him like he was perfectly normal then he would be perfectly normal. We made sure to give him every opportunity to do everything that our other children did, and at a very young age, he and Beth (our daughter who is 14 months his elder) became very close friends, which helped Titus to grow immensely.
Never once during this did I cry or whine or even worry that he may contract cancer, or be mentally slow, but then......
Titus turned 7.
The testing stopped.
And he was Perfect!
Suddenly all the emotions that I had refused to allow myself feel for so long surfaced. I became an emotional wreck any time I spoke about Titus - and I could commonly be caught crying uncontrollably in my car. I cried all the tears of fear that as a mother I should have cried when he was sick. The tears I refused to cry when I was hooking him up to respirators for months at home while he was an infant. The tears and fear I refused to experience when I carted 5, and 6, and 7 children with me to have his blood drawn and his ultrasounds done for seven years. And the tears of fear I should have cried to think that my child would likely be retarded, and possibly even die as a young boy.
That's a lot of tears to catch up on. But mostly I cried because my little boy was okay, and was going to be okay and that made me so happy. Titus is still doing great, and will be eight this coming March. :)
As many of you know, we now have 8 beautiful babies, but the eighth isn't born until the the third part of this story. For now this is where we'll end.
Life is All Surreal.
Trials and suffering build character in a person, they may be hard to experience, but the good things in life wouldn't be so pleasant if you'd never experienced any pain.
MJB
Find the rest of this series here:
Previous post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
Next Post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
My life as it Pertains to me Part 5
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 6
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 7
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