GOLD

MY BIRTH. On August 13, 1986, my mom was about to give birth to her third child. The baby she was about to give birth to was me. Having a baby is such a happy and joyful time in a person's life, never could anything go wrong on such a special and memorable day. As my mom was in the midst of giving birth, and as I was just about to make my arrival, the doctor reached for me and noticed I was not turning. He told my parents not to worry, and that they would do an emergency C-section. As the doctor went to make his incision, he then proceeded to reach for me again, and as he did that he had the shock of his life. As he reached to pull me out of my mother's womb, he felt every bone in my legs crumble right in his hands. At that moment he was at a loss, wondering what to do. He knew if he continued to try to squeeze me out of that tiny incision he had just made, my bones would continue to break; and worse, he knew the most important risk would be my neck breaking. If that happened, my life would have been over before it ever began. At the time, of course, my parents, especially my mom, were scared, but I think more than scared they were a little angry because for months before my birth my mom kept crying out to her doctors telling them that she knew something was not right about this pregnancy. She was always sick, and she barely felt me move throughout the pregnancy. This was not her first child - she had two other kids before me - so she knew what a normal, healthy pregnancy felt like, and she knew this was not it. She was so persistent in saying something was wrong that the doctor even did an extra ultrasound. On the ultrasound they did notice my head was a little large for an average baby, but then they proceeded to look over at my parents, smiled and said, “Oh don't worry, your baby is fine. There is a one-in-a-million chance of anything being wrong with this baby.” Well on August 13, 1986, those odds were coming true. As the doctors were doing everything they could to deliver me safely, they were also tearing my mother apart like she was some animal (as mom puts it). Years later I remember my dad told me it was such a terrible scene seeing them do everything that they were having to do that he almost passed out from watching it all take place. After they finally and safely delivered me, I was alive but barely hanging on, and I basically had every bone in my body broken. My little arms and legs were all bent and deformed, and my head was so soft that you could barely touch it. I only weighed four pounds and was thirteen inches long. The doctors were at a loss; they did not even medically know what was wrong with me for the first few hours. The doctor that delivered me felt so guilty for not being more prepared and was in such a state of shock that from that moment his life as a doctor would probably never be the same. The day I was born I was all the maternity ward was talking about, my name was being mentioned to every doctor on the floor. They may not have known exactly what I had, but whatever it was they knew it was rare, and they knew it was bad. That same day I was born there was a doctor who just happened to be visiting the hospital. Just by the information and description that was given he asked if he could see me. He said he was almost sure he knew what I had, so they immediately let him examine me. The minute he saw me, even though in his thirty sone years of practice he had only seen one other such case, there was still no denying it; he knew his suspicions were right.