*This is a story I have been working on for a few weeks now, any comments are appreciated*
For about the last eight years I have been in a relationship with the most wonderful man that anyone could ever hope to be with. So many things have happened for us, and so many more will come.
We began dating in October of 2000, after he had gone away on a bow hunting trip and apparently decided that after years of friendship that the two of us were meant to be together. The first few weeks were spent getting to know the people we had become over the years in comparison to the people we had been before. Within two months time we were in love deeper than I had felt in a long time. Also around that time I began to feel different somehow, mostly physically…things were sore that had never been and let’s face it they were getting bigger too! So one night Claud and I went out to buy a pregnancy test from Meijer…well I chickened out and said “no I can’t be pregnant” and I took him home. Well somehow after I dropped him off I decided that I should buy that test after all, so off to the local grocery I went to get one…well I bought two just in case. I headed back home, to my parents, and off to the bathroom I went with my little bag from the grocery store. I took the first test and within seconds it was positive, after checking the instructions again to be sure I read them right I took the second test, hoping for different results. That one too was positive, I remember how scared I was that night. The first thing that I did was started crying, my mom asked me what was wrong and I remember not even thinking before I told her to come into the bathroom and see. She thought for some reason that I was crying because I had broken up with Claud….not sure why she thought that but I told her “no I am crying because I live here with you guys, I am 19, and I have only been dating Claud for 2 months and I have no idea how far along I am!” After talking with my mom I went for the phone and called Claud, I got his voicemail and left him a message, half sobbing and asking him to meet me at my parents ASAP! The next phone call I made was to my best friend, and told her to please come over, then to my sister who called me a dumb ass.
The steps from there are long and kind of boring, I found a doctor and found out how far along I was, I knew then that Claud and I together had created a life and I felt much better knowing that I was not going to lose this wonderful man. Although he tells me now and then that even if I had been 6 months along he would not have left me. He was in love with me no matter what the circumstances.
I think that has always been the hardest part of this relationship for everyone around us, is not knowing that we did not marry because we had Cj, but because we were and still are very much in love. Claud did not “do the right thing” and marry me, I can assure you that if that were the case I would not have married him…the same way that if I hadn’t been in love with him I wouldn’t have made the walk down the aisle.
In January of 2000, I moved into Claud’s parents house, this would not have been my first housing choice, but living with my parents any longer was not an option. Not because they kicked me out but because I didn’t feel that it was a safe place to be while pregnant. A few months later Claud and I started getting serious about finding a place of our own before the baby was born. We looked at houses but quickly found out that we couldn’t afford the down payment on a house or anything else on it for that matter. So we ended up finding a place in the trailer park that was cheap and just the right size for our little family.
In June of 2001, we moved into our new place all alone in the great big world., the world inside our trailer was not very big…two small bedrooms, a kitchen and living room and one bathroom which held the washer and dryer in it’s cramped space. Still it was home for us and all we wanted or needed at the time, a place to call out own. The first year was a trying one, I had to learn that there really weren’t magical fairies that came in and cleaned and did your laundry for you. The house was a total wreck all the time and laundry was piled so high that it would take a bulldozer to move it all! I am very embarrassed to admit I was not a good housekeeper at all and didn’t really know how to cook anything that didn’t go from freezer to oven. There were many fights and arguments over my lack of domestic abilities. There was a flying box of mac n cheese which is one of my favorite stories to tell, although for the purposes of this story I will skip it.
In July, we anxiously awaited the birth of Claud John Leach 11, he was due July 31st but as most parents we hoped he would show up a little early for us to meet him. On July 19th I woke up to what I thought were strong contractions, Claud and I had already been to the hospital more times than the staff that worked there over the last few weeks, so there was no way that I was going to ask him to take me in again. I waited until he left for work then I called my sister to take me in for what I thought would be another trip there and home. When we arrived at the labor and delivery unit they took me into a room and asked me change into a gown and give a urine sample. I went into the bathroom and could hear my sister talking with the nurse in the room, she said to her “they have been in and out of here a ton of times in the last week, can’t you just induce labor?” I didn’t hear the nurses answer to her question, I came out of the bathroom and waited for the doctor to come into the room. When he came in he said something that I found hard to believe, “I am going to break your water, congratulations you are going to have a baby today.”
As soon as the Doctor left the room I called Claud, once again sobbing I told him “they broke my water…” now keep in mind that he didn’t’ know I was even at the hospital as I spoke to him, so the first thing he said was “I will fix it when I get home” I explained as calmly as possible that it wasn’t the water that was broke but my water and that he needed to come to the hospital and meet me. My sister and I went for a walk and ended up outside, we happened to get out there the same time that Claud and his dad were arriving. There I was standing outside in my hospital gown, water broke and scared as all hell. Claud Sr. called Joyce and she came up. At some point I or my sister called my mom and she also was there, so here I am in this room with my sister, fiance, mom, and soon to be mother and father in law, I am in pain at this point and really wanted to be with only my sister…as bad as that sounds she is the one that comforts me the most. I had planned to have my sister, mom and Claud in the room with me from the start, but now here I sat with Claud and Joyce in there and trying to think through the pain how to politely tell them to leave. At about that exact moment my soon to be father in law said “does it hurt yet?” So he gave me the reason to tell my sister to take them out and please don’t bring them back. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them, I was just not yet comfortable with them enough to let either of them share in such an intimate occasion. I asked the nurse to be put in the whirlpool tub to help ease the pain of the contractions as I heard this helps. She cleaned the tub out and before she put me in she checked to see how far I was dilated, it was to 5 so she went ahead and let me in the tub. It felt wonderful, I had one contraction and felt ok, then another that was a lot less painful, then the third came and I turned to my sister and said “Sissy I feel like I need to push” She immediately pulled the cord to call for help, and her and Claud helped me from the tub and onto the bed in the room. A nurse came in and asked what was wrong, my sister explained and the nurse said “there is no way it has only been a few minutes and she was at only 5” Beth told her to check me again to be sure, so she did and I was at 10! Her eyes were the size of half dollars as she ran to get the doctor, not before saying to me “pant do not push!!”
When the doctor got there he simply grabbed a chair and sat at the end of my bed, never really saying a word to me. After about 30 minutes of me pushing and falling asleep between contractions, Beth asked them for a mirror at the foot of the bed so that I could see what I was doing. Within 10 minutes after that Claud John Leach 11 had made his way into the world. The funniest thing happened when he came out, he pee’d on my sister, the doctor actually spoke then saying “never seen that happen before!” So here he was my little baby boy 6 pounds 13 ounces and 19 ½” long. Born at 3:43pm, just in time for me to watch Ricki Lake at 4:00.…that was the running joke that I couldn’t miss the second part of the two parter I watched the day before. Claud cried as soon as he was born, it was the most emotion I had ever seen come from him. He was just overwhelmed...to see me in all that pain and there being nothing he could do to stop it for me. His parents thought something had gone wrong when they saw him, his face was pale and he could barely speak, if I didn't know it before I knew then that he loved me more than anyone ever could.
A day later we were home with our brand new bundle of joy. I had a hard time adjusting to being a mom with all it’s responsibilities. It took awhile and lots of advice to get a general hang of things. Claud and I started shared parenting rather early with CJ, we would take turns watching him and taking him places with us so that the other could have a break. Because after all it was just too hard to load up the diaper bag and carseat to go anywhere. If I only knew then what I know now. We made it through the first year with CJ without too much trouble, only the normal problems that new parents face.
After awhile we decided that we wanted to have just two kids, two years apart a little boy and a little girl would make us a perfect American family. In October of 2002 I found out I was pregnant with baby number two, due July 18th 2003. Wow they were really going to be two years apart! It had happened exactly as we had it planned.
The pregnancy with Dillion was fairly uneventful in the beginning, but the last three months were trying to say the least. Even in the womb that boy was ready to go go go. I had a lot of preterm labor, and was in and out of the hospital getting shots to stop the contractions, finally in the last month of my pregnancy they gave me some pills that were supposed to stop all the contractions and give the little guy a chance to grow some more. That worked well through May and into the first part of June while I had the pills, but on the day that I took the last pill, holding off was no longer an option. At the time we were house sitting for my sister while she was in New Mexico, that night at about 3 a.m. I started having contractions, I started watching the clock knowing that if they weren’t in a pattern they weren’t real. I watched them start at ten minutes apart and over the next few hours go to 5-6 minutes apart. We had CJ with us and I didn’t want to wake up Joyce to come and get him any earlier than I had to, but once they were 4-5 minutes apart I decided that it may be time to call.
I remember trying to wake up Claud, who might I add is not the easiest person to wake up. Finally I lied and told him that my water had broken, that got his attention and got him out of bed, and then of course I told him the truth. Joyce came and picked up CJ and we headed to the hospital. When we arrived they took me into this little exam room to check me out, I explained to them what I had been experiencing, the nurse put me up on the bed to check my cervix, while the Doctor was reading the chart. The nurse said “she is dilated…..” the doctor cut her off saying “she has been dilated to 3 for a few weeks” then the nurse said “yeah well she is at 5 now!” I let them know what had happened with the first baby once I was at 5 and how quickly he had made his way into the world. They were soon off to find me a delivery room!
Claud looked at me like a scared child and said “can I call your Mom now?” He remembered vividly the last time we were at 5cm, so I guess he felt he needed someone else there to help him, oh I mean me.
Once things got rolling, I opted again for a natural birth, as I had with CJ. Only this time there was no tub to relax in, but it was okay with me because I was very calm and cool. In fact when the Doctor came in to check on me the nurse said “now she hasn’t had anything for pain although she looks like she has.” This was my favorite nurse out of all of my deliveries, she was an excellent spokesperson and really seemed to care. When the time came closer, the Doctor decided to break my water, she started to put on some latex gloves and the nurse explained her theory that if she broke my water the baby would soon follow. And because I hadn’t gained that much weight they were also afraid that because he was 4 weeks early he would be small. Therefore, they also didn’t break down the bed. When the doctor broke my water, I asked the nurse to grab a mirror, I knew that it helped immensely the first time. She did and within a fairly short time Dillion Gabriel Leach had made his first apperance in our life. At 6 pounds and 19 ¾” long, he was a fairly good size baby for a “preemie”. As a doctor told me that day, if you could hope for a size for a vaginal delivery that would be the size.
After Dillion was born our life changed a lot more than I thought it would. Back to an earlier statement about how hard it was to load up one kid to go away. Now we had two and both were still in diapers and carseats. It was when Dillion was born that I made the decision to become a full time wife and Mother. I knew that we couldn’t afford to pay daycare for two kids so we could work, and I wanted to raise my kids not let someone else do it. Also we wanted to spend time together and not always work separate shifts all the time so one could watch the kids while the other was at work. This method of parenting worked well for us, although others didn’t always agree with the choices we made, they were our choices and were the best ones for us.
I remember when Dillion was a baby I found myself less worried about what other people thought of my parenting abilities and more worried about doing the best job that I could for our family. I knew then and I know now I will never be the soccer mom cheering my kids on at all the games, or the room mom baking all the treats and going on every single fieldtrip that my kids have. I am just not that way. I try the best that I can to enjoy my children on a daily basis and sometimes it is harder than others. Once Dillion was born I learned a little more to accept my fate as my mother, she was never really a kid person and I knew that was how I would end up being. That is not to say that I don’t love my own kids or enjoy the things that they learn on a day to day basis, but I am not the one that offers to babysit or hold playdates at my house.
As Dillion grew we watched the bond grow between him and Cj, despite the fact that they fought a lot, they still seemed to stick up for one another. It has always been a “I can pick on him but you can’t” kind of relationship.
As the first 5 years of our relationship passed along, we lost a lot of friends due to the changes in our lives. We could no longer come and go as we pleased, and most of our friends at the time were still single and out every night. Although we always allowed each other the freedom to use our “free” time as we wanted, we found more and more that all we wanted was to be with each other and the boys as a family. It takes a long time to accept that people change and friendships fade, but once you accept it, you can move on with your life a lot more easily.
We continued to live in the little trailer of ours until 2005 when we started getting serious about finding some place a little bigger. We still had the problem of not qualifying for a mortgage but this time it was due to being self employed more than anything else. So we knew that buying a house was still not an option for us, we didn’t really want to stay in the trailer park, but we knew we didn’t want to rent a house either. We couldn’t see spending all that money on something that would never be ours. Shortly after we started looking I came across a trailer that was bigger than ours and a lot newer, it so happened that Claud’s cousin owned the place and was willing to sell it to us on a land contract. So we bought it, we were so excited because we were finally going to have more room. The boys at the time were 4 and 2 and didn’t mind at all sharing a room, therefore Claud had a gun/hunting/office room all to his very own.
About two months after we had moved in, I found out I was pregnant again! I really was not planning on having any more kids, at least not for 3 or more years from then. Again we took the news in stride and starting planning things out for baby #3.
This pregnancy was different from the start, for one I had all day sickness some people get morning sickness but not me I was nauseous all day, everyday. This went on the entire first trimester, the second trimester brought on more things that I never had dealt with like swelling. I was swelling so badly and nobody thought that it was an issue although I brought it up many times. I knew there was a problem when during week 29 or 30 I had gained 12 pounds in one week! I tried to tell the Dr. that it was not right, that I had only gained 14 pounds the entire pregnancy with CJ and only 3 pounds with Dillion, I am just a person who doesn’t gain weight while pregnant. It was written off as normal and my next weeks appointment was set. At my 31 week appointment I had gained a little more and they had found protein in my urine, I had to have some blood work done that I had procrastinated about so I was told to go into the hospital that night and have it done.
When Claud got out of work that night I asked him to take me in, my sister had taken the kids for me to go. I went in and they started me on the monitors because that is what they do in labor and delivery no matter why you are there. They began explaining the urine test that they wanted to run and that I could do it at home and bring it back to the lab the following day. As I laid there waiting for the testing supplies, I began to notice small contractions, soon the nurse came in and said “can you feel those?’ I told her just barely. She came in with the shots that I so dreaded as I had already been through them with Dillion, and the bag of IV fluids that I knew took forever to drip into my body. Claud and I both looked at each other and said “ughh!” knowing we were stuck in the hospital for at least 3 hours more and by this time it was already 8 pm.
A while later a Dr. came in to check my cervix to see if I was dilating at all. I was, to 2 cm. She seemed slightly concerned about this as it was really too early to be happening. She left the room saying she’d be back in a little while. Soon she was back with an ultrasound machine, I had never had them do that before while in the hospital. She did the ultrasound and said “that is strange there isn’t a lot of fluid around the baby.” This freaked me out a lot, I knew that fluid was vital and wasn’t sure what they could do to add some…funny what you think.
Shortly after she left the room another nurse ,whom I nicknamed “the pokey lady” because of how many times she had to poke me for the IV, came into the room I was on the phone with my sister at the time and told her I had to let her go. The nurse told me she had to take me for another test…..I said “do you have to poke me again?” she said if I failed the test then she may have to. She wheeled me down to the ultrasound room, I was thinking “didn’t we already cover this?” The tech took me in the room and began the ultrasound on me, while she was doing the u/s she kept shaking my stomach and asking me if the baby normally moved a lot, I said yes…and looked to Claud who could see the monitor, he just shook his head at me and the look on his face said it all. The baby was not moving and tears began to fall down my face, I tried to stop them but I couldn’t hold them back. Instantly I felt numb, had I really lost the baby girl I had so long hoped for? What did I do wrong to make this happen? Could I have prevented it? Do you bury a 31 week old baby? I don’t’ know why that last one came to mind but it did and I was damn scared!
The tech finished the u/s and told us someone would be down shortly to get me, then she wheeled me into the hall and half shut her door. We heard her on the phone calling upstairs, we couldn’t hear much but the one thing we did hear was “there is a heartbeat.” These four words calmed me so much and I began to relax a little more.
Pretty soon there was another nurse there to wheel me back upstairs, she got behind me and started pushing, to say she was speed walking would be putting it lightly, this lady was running. I asked her to slow down so my husband could keep up, she apologized and said she needed to hurry to get me back on the monitors. When we got back to the room I was in before, there was people in there that I had not seen before, most of them were in surgical caps. They got me on the bed and a Dr. said to me “we have to take your baby now, Sparrow’s neonatal team is on the way to care for her.” At that point the tears were uncontrollable, I started bawling and shaking and crying so hard that most of the things after that sentence are a blur. I remember them prepping me for surgery and telling Claud to change into scrubs, I remember him going into the bathroom and them taking me out and wheeling me down the hall to the OR. Mostly I remember them saying Claud couldn’t come in because they had to put me under. My mind raced for the very few minutes that I was awake after that, what if they can’t save her? What if they can’t save me?” Why can’t I stop shaking?” Why are they taking her?
The next thing I remember is waking up in a terrible amount of pain and looking to my side to find Claud sitting there next to me. I asked him how she was, and he said something to the effect of little. I was not allowed anything for pain until the NICU people got done talking to me about Savannah’s condition. When they came in to talk to me I was told my baby girl was alive and a machine was doing her breathing for her. Savannah Dianne Leach was born December 21st 2005 at 11:37pm, weighing a mere 2 pounds 5 oz. and 14 ½ inches long.
I was devastated to think that I may still lose her, but remained hopeful the entire time. It was like a little voice was with me saying that it was all going to be okay. After that first minute of hearing the news I never again thought of how long I had with her, but instead how long until I had her home with our family.
After a short month in the nicu Savannah was released to come home and be with her family, the day we brought her home she weighed in at 3 pounds 7 oz. I can’t remember her exact length but it was pretty small still. I was excited and scared all over again at the thought of having her home. I was happy to be able to see her daily and hold her without the barrier of wires, but I was so nervous that I wouldn’t do things right and that she would end up back in the hospital again.
About a week after she got home she got a cold. I rushed her to the Dr. who told me everything I had been doing was right and under no circumstances was I to take her to the ER, if a problem arose I could page them and they would see her. They didn’t want to chance an unknowledgeable Doctor putting her back in the NICU for no real reason.
We got through that cold fairly easily with the proper home treatment, since then Savannah has been about as far from a preemie as you can be. All of her milestones were hit right on target for a full term baby instead of for her adjusted age, she truly was the biggest miracle either of us had ever witnesses.
Once Savannah came home we had to try to learn to function as a family of five, from just the normal everyday to the expense of having 3 children and ourselves to support. It has been hard to adjust to the fact that the world is really priced and made for families of 3 and maybe 4 but a family of 5 is not the norm these days.
Like every family we have our good days and we have our bad days, but no matter what the five of us are a family and no matter what we are always there for one another. Our kids may not be the most well behaved kids in the world, and our bickering may sound to others like the verge of divorce…but it is our family and our world and the love we have for each other is unconditional.
I cannot now imagine a life that Claud and my children were not in, I love them all with every piece of my heart. I am luckier than most in that I have a supportive husband, and I am aware of all the things that he does for us. He is always there to hold me when I need it, and make me smile when I feel like the world is against me. I have never had a best friend that I could count on all the time and now I do in my husband.
My kids are the best that I could ever hope for. They love me unconditionally and there are so many times when I am having a bad day, that sometimes they caused, that they are there to hug me or cuddle me to make me feel better. As I said before I am not the “soccer mom” type, and I may not always have the energy or time to sit and play house, tea party, or army men with my kids, but they are my world and I will always make sure that I do the nest I can to be their mom.
So as you see the last eight years have been a ride to say the least, but I have learned and grown from it year by year. I know there will be more adventures for us in the coming years, and I know that we will continue to grow and learn as a family and as a couple. I also know there are those that will want to bring us down, and push us apart but one thing I know for sure is that the love this family has is strong enough to survive anything as long as we are willing to try.
****And if you have managed to get through all this I am forever grateful that you care enough about us to read some of how we got where we are today*****
