In the begining

To begin this story I have to begin before Rowan was born, before he was conceived, back for the short time that we were 3.

In March of 2003 I received a job offer to be the resident manager of a 2 month old, ~300 unit 2 story storage facility in Texas City. this came a time I was fed up with where I was, and i had a little experience in the storage industry, having been an assistant manager for a while. While the location was far from friends and family, the pay and proposed benefits seemed too good to pass up. Aidan was a healthy, happy, advanced 6 month old, and John was willing to make the commute back to Clear Lake for his job. My grandmother was a blessing and agreed to drive down to us to continue to care for Aidan while we both worked. After Aidan was born I tried the Ortho patch for birth control, but I have always had problems with birth control, and ended up discontinuing it after a few months because it made me so ill. I didn't plan to get pregnant, but I had not been taking anything to prevent it, so it was a big shock, and we were thrilled, if a little scared at the prospect of two in diapers.

I was not one of those women who thrived on being pregnant. I didn't glow, I just grew. Considering what some women go though with morning sickness and all, you could say I had an easy pregnancy. I never had a bout of morning sickness with either child, and I always figured that was why I put on so much weight. Even so, this second pregnancy was not like the first, I felt more run down, and dental problems, and lots of sinus infections. I was bloated, and Rowan seemed to res funny in my stomach just hitting nerves that left me with this horrible numb tingled in my hands and aches in my hips.

Just as with Aidan, my due date came and when with no end in sight. At first the doctor did not want to induce because she believed he was too small, boy was she wrong. A week went by and the night before I was due to go in and scheduled to be induced, I went in to labor. January 19th at 1am we made the trek down to Clear Lake. I labored all night and much of the morning. I was having back labor, which means he was laying with his spine against my spine, which isn't really dangerous, but it is painful. By the time it was time to do the pushing my first round of drugs had worn off and the second had not yet kicked in. Rowan it seemed to be stuck, unable to get his head down past my hips into the birth canal. The monitors started showing an erratic heart beat and we began to think that the cord might be wrapped around his neck. I was so tired, drugged and out of it that much of this was a foggy blur. They decided to do an emergency c-section.

To be continued . . .

Introduction to this little elephant's blog

This in Brandy, Rowan's mom. I started this blog for myself & for him, and anyone else who might be interested in hearing Rowans story. A lot of this is about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS), a neurobiological disorder that recent statistic measure that 1 in every 150 children are diagnosed with. But mostly this is a frame of reference in one place form me to see where we have come from and try to see where we are going. I have blogged other places about our life, but here I am going to attempt to start from the beginning and tell what I remember of his story.