My Son is a Teenager today.

It’s hard to believe that this young man who looks great in a suit and is as tall as I am was once a premature baby weighing 8 pounds and 3 ounces. Yes, that’s right an eight pound preemie. He was due in April and born on March 1, his lungs weren’t fully developed although the rest of him was huge. Had he gone full term, he would have been about ten pounds. As a preemie, he developed this wheezing noise that the nurses assured me was just his way of expelling fluid from his lungs. Three weeks later, however, he still made that wheezing noise. The pediatrician told me that it had become a comfort noise. And it did become a comfort noise for me. I could hear him breathing at night. For some reason, with this one, I developed post partum depression. March 1 was the day that we moved my office into the house following the sale of a major portion of the company, at the end of the moving, I sat down in my chair and my water broke. I was transferred business calls while I was in the hospital. When I got home, every time I laid down to rest I would have auditory hallucinations of either the office telephone ringing or the baby crying. I didn’t sleep for several weeks; my doctor figured it out at my postnatal exam. It’s the only time in my life I’ve taken prescription medication to sleep. But I hated the medication, I was sure that while I was sleeping, he would stop breathing and I wouldn’t know it. Then I would hear him wheeze in his sleep, almost as if he were saying,” I’m okay, Mom.”
Today, he’s a sensitive soul who panics if I raise my voice at him. He’s smart, handsome, and girls like him but he doesn’t realize that they’re flirting with him. I hope it stays that way for a few more years. He’s fascinated with engineering and adores math. He quilts with me because he loves the math involved. He gets to play with fractions and have something to show for it. He joined the Quilt guild so that he could enter the contest this year. I’m hoping that his motivation will help keep me on track.