Teensy & the Boys

My wife and I will have been married for 12 years this March. It's hard to imagine that I've been married that long really. I never dated in high school, or college for that matter. Never experienced the "first kiss" or holding hands awkwardly. All of that stuff missed me. I had one girlfriend in 5th grade, Barbie Reeves, and that was all she was, my girlfriend. I never called her, we never held hands, we never went to the movies, we only saw each other during 6th hour. We were together like that all school year. When summer came I forgot to break up, actually I didn't know that was part of the "girlfriend thing." She moved out of district and didn't show up until my Senior year. She had changed into this very dark person. Smoked, wore punk clothes and was not my type. When I saw her I said, "Hey Barb, long time no see. I guess this would be as good a time as any to break up. Sorry it took so long." She gave me this half cocked strange look and said, "O...k I hope you are OK with this decision." My first dating experience was with a girl named Denise, her grandmother asked--begged--me to call her up and go on a date with her. I called and she accepted. Typical of my incredible low self esteem I panicked and bought an entirely new outfit (underwear, socks, the whole nine yards-even waited to shave and took another shower right before going to her house) and contemplated buying a new car, but didn't have time. I was totally nervous that she wouldn't like me and would dismiss herself at dinner to go powder her nose and then crawl out the window escaping to her freedom. The date almost went that bad. I took her to my favorite place, Bellini's Italian Bistro. I spent the remainder of the evening staring at an arm-crossed mute. Awkward on a level that no scale or algorithm could calculate. When I'm nervous I start blabbering about the most bizarre things and never stop to give anyone a break. I was regurgitating every trivia fact I knew, commenting on the wait staff that I acted as I were family, and pointed out every single table I had dined at in the restaraunt. Then tere were the famous Waterford ducks that I tried to talk about. It was awkward. That was the case on this night. Totally uncomfortable and awkward, stumbling and gafawing all over myself. We called the date over after dinner even though I had some movie times in my pocket just in case. "So, would you like to go to a movie?" "Oh, NO! I mean, you have to work tomorrow and i wouldn't want you to be tired or anything." It was 7:30! I was just a tad beyond that being my bedtime since I had to stay up until 1 am to perform my duties as a Dorm monitor. The car didnt' really come to a complete stop before she was out the door and on the porch. I was as glad as she was that it was over. I swore I would never ever date again (I was 23 and clearly too old to be going on a first date).
Mutual friends of Kendra and me started talking behind our backs about how we should get together. I wanted no part of it, but did become good friends with her and enjoyed that. I'll have to save our courtship for another blog. Skipping forward--we got married.
After being married for two years we decided to begin our family. Six months into our efforts we decided we needed to get professional help. That started our journey through infertility. Kendra has a host of medical problems that made our ability to have children impossible. Specialist after specialist told us we could not have children. Surgery, pills, shots, thermometers and charts, you name it we tried it. Some of the things we were told would be sure fire can't miss things turned into a Barnum and Bailey center ring attraction. Needless to say we were frustrated and climbed the mountain for about four years. Each month that passed more frustrated.
The realization that we were not going to bring children into this world from our gene pools was painful and rather devastating to accept. Adoption opened up an opportunity for us and we pursued that. When we were accepted through an agency and began the process of waiting for a birth mother to select our profile we waited nine months. Titus came to us rather unexpectedly, but we were thrilled. Note: I'm giving ver basic information (basic for me) and I'll be sure to tell each of their stories in the painful details that my posts often disclose. Titus will be 5 in June.
Titus was two and another opportunity just fell into our laps. A friend of ours at our church in Texas had come to find out that their daughter's preschool teacher was pregnant and did not want the baby. One night at Starbucks we met and spent about three hours talking after which time she asked if we would accept her unborn child into our family. Enter Levi. It's so hard to just skate over these stories--you have no idea. Levi will be two in August.
Kendra and I had finished our family and our time with the church in Texas. We moved to Oklahoma at the first of last year. Due to the nature of our situation Kendra and the boys lived in Missouri with my Mom while I lived and worked in Oklahoma at our new Church home. Our house in Fort Worth was on the market. After living apart from January until March we decided in April to buy a house and keep our home in Texas on the market and just make it work. My great church paid the mortgage on our Texas house which was a blessing. We moved into our new home in April and love it.
For most of the 2006 summer and into fall Kendra felt horrible. No improvment and it was October. In November she finally decided to go to the doctor and get checked out. she knew she had a hernia by her belly button and figured the rest was a medication malfunction. We finally got an appointment for November 29th at 10 am. We dropped off our boys at preschool and made our way to the doctor's office for her checkup. there was a massive winter storm approaching and we were hoping to get through and home with the boys before all of that stuff hit.
At 10:30 I was summoned to the exam room from the waiting room. Kendra was crying and her doctor looked very pale. He said, "Mr. Spoon your wife is pregnant and in grave danger. Her blood pressure is extremely high and she is at risk of stroke or seizure. She needs to go straight to the Emergency room by you or by ambulance." A very long...long pause ensued. "So...she's pregnant?" I seemed to get high center on that one. The rest began to slowly leech into my thick head. He doctor made his way to the front and began calling the hospital while we began making our way to the ER.
I dropped Kendra off at the door and found a parking spot. The storm had started and it was getting ugly outside. In the ER a nurse took Kendra to the first stage, temp and blood pressure with the "what's your problem" questions. We were not through with that when a nurse just appeared out of thin air and said, "Spoon! Come with me" We were on our way to the second floor. I text messaged Millie at that point. Lucy was on her way up and all of our family was on their way too. All we knew at that point was that Kendra was pregnant and in danger of losing her life and the babies life.
The second floor of the hospital is Labor and Delivery. We were in a L/D room. I still couldn't believe it. I felt as if I were in the Matrix and everything around me was moving slowly while I was moving at break neck pace. A crew of 8 nurses had Kendra stripped and fully wired in about thirty seconds. I was sitting in a chair, breathing--deep and slow. At one point I remember asking, "Is there anyone here who attends to husbands?" No response. I supposed I would be discovered when one of the nurses tripped over my lifeless body. I was all alone my boys were all alone at school and I was staring at my wife, contemplating what decision I would make if the fate of her life were thrust upon me.
Dr. Walter came rolling in. She was an interesting person. The love child of Phylis Diller and Eddy Albert. "Kendra, I'm Dr. Walter--you are pregnant we aren't sure how far along, but one thing is for sure--you are delivering a baby today maybe tomorrow if we can keep you alive that long." B...A...B...Y! Today! Holy Cow! Today? Another text fired off to Mildred. By this time the sonogram cart had been rolled in. The mega-fancy one was on another floor and put into que for our room. This sonogram machine was very old and used only to see if the baby's head was in the birthing canal. The inexperienced nurses were roaming around Kendra's tummy looking for something. The nurse said, "there's the baby." I was looking for a kidney bean sized baby on the screen--"I see the head." HEAD! Oh dear God that is a full blown baby in that gut! That head was huge! "This baby is at least in the third tri-mester, right Doctor?" "At least, we'll know more when we see it."
For the next twelve hours we were waiting, anxiously waiting for Kendra to stabilize and not get worse. Slowly our family managed to make it in and took over caring for our boys. On November 30th at 7:42 in the morning Emma came into the world by emergency c-section. She weighed 3 pounds 2 ounces and was 17 inches long. She was 29 weeks long and had a mountain to climb. I briefly got a chance to see her before she was taken to the NICU. She was in the NICU for forty days and came home at 5 pounds on the nose.
She is my teensy, the genesis for the title of this rambling waste of cyberspace. Teensy and the boys are all gifts which I do not deserve to have. Each one of their precious little lives are amazing. I am in awe and amazement each and everyday at just how amazing and wonderful they are. Teensy is getting bigger and bigger each day and the boys are getting bigger and badder everyday. We love them so much.
I have many, many more stories to share from within the confines of this post, but this is in a nutshell the story of Teensy and the Boys.