What do you do when life sends you on a detour?

          No matter how much I plan and make arrangements for how I want my life to go, God, the Fates. the Universe, Mother Earth, whatever you call that Being who is “in charge,” looks at me and laughs a little. I think it says, “That’s what you want to do? Yeah, well, why don’t you try this first?”

          I kind of look at our entire Parenthood Journey that way. Like we had the whole thing planned out and somebody out in the atmosphere said: I want you to do it this way.

          My husband’s and my introduction to parenting wasn’t so much a quiet transition as it was a swim in a vat of boiling oil. We tried for several years to get pregnant. Then, finally, we were. And then suddenly, we almost weren’t. We learned just how tenuous pregnancy is. You don’t just get pregnant and have a baby. There are 40 weeks of growth, development, and innumerable opportunities for something to go “wrong.”

          In our case, one of those events happened on a Saturday morning when I was 19 weeks into the pregnancy. My water broke. Typically, after that protective barrier of the amniotic sac is ruptured, labor begins. But that didn’t happen. Instead. I was sent home to wait for that first contraction. Then I’d go back to the hospital and deliver a child who would be too underdeveloped to survive life outside my body.

          For seven weeks, I sat on my couch, watching The Price is Right, cross-stitching for hours, and listening to more baseball than I can recall ever listening to in my entire life.

          Once we found out this baby was a boy, we decided to name him and talk to him as if he were already here. We wanted to know who our baby was, not who he could have become.

          I remember being in early labor. The nurses were trying to teach me Lamaze breathing techniques to work through each contraction. This sanctimonious, pompous prig of a neonatologist stood at the foot of my hospital bed drinking coffee from a white mug. As I was trying to listen to all that was going on around me, he had the nerve to say, “You realize, Mrs. Taylor, that your son will probably not survive out of the delivery room.”

If I could have, I would have slapped him. What the hell did this man think I’ve been thinking every second of every minute of every hour of every day of the seven weeks I sat there in my house hoping to put this moment off as long as possible?

Then, as they rolled me into the delivery room, the jerk doctor’s partner leaned over me, walking along with the gurney. I only remember the view of her face: hair covered with a surgical bonnet, her glasses covering her eyes, and a surgical mask covering the lower portion of her face. She looked at me and said: “We’re going to do everything that we can to save your son.”

          And I believed her.

          I don’t remember much about the people who were there when Evan was born. But I will remember those two doctors until I breathe my last breath.

          My due date was Feb. 9, 1993. Evan was born on Nov. 3, 1992 – Election Day. My husband was pulled in so many different directions, I imagine he felt like he was being drawn and quartered. I was in one hospital, while Evan was moved to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at what is now known as Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

          Not long after Evan’s eventful entrance to this world, a social worker at Children’s Hospital gave us a copy of a story written by a mom who tried to explain what it was like having a child with a disability. I’ll paraphrase it here, but if you want a copy of the story, visit here for the download.