Birthday

Without rewriting the story I will simply provide the link to the very first post.

The emotions I'm feeling right now are hard to describe. I cannot begin to tell you how lucky I feel to have my children. How incredibly blessed I am to be able to mother them. How I still cannot believe that I got pregnant. That my body made these two beautiful beings- grew them to perfection. That they lived inside of me swimming, growing, thinking, waiting. That they came out of me full, perfect and beautiful. That they not only lived but they thrived, they were born 6 full weeks early. I must be the luckiest woman alive.

For their first birthday there was a cloud that hung over our family. We had a small party a week before their actual birthday but were very careful who could come as we couldn't have Madeleine get the slightest bit of sickness. She was to have surgery a week after her birthday. I look back to the pictures of my babies at their first birthday and all I can see, besides the sheer beauty of the twins, is Madeleine's 'unfixed' leg. During their party last year Madeleine had her foot. She had a bowed tibia with a pronounced dimple on the front of her shin. This is where the apex of the bone was. Dr. Mosca fixed it when did the osteotomy and straightening of her tibia. He took out some of the tissue in an effort to make the skin smoother. This is the scar Madeleine points to most. She simply says, 'scar, doctor fixed it'.

At the time I was so pained to think of her surgery, to think of my baby girl with an amputated foot. It was so hard. Click here to read how hard that was. Rereading those entries makes me cry. The emotion was so very raw, the pain so tangible. The future was impossible to predict, impossible to know, I was unable to take comfort in a brand new day.

Now when I look back to that time it is like seeing an old friend grieve and wanting to hold them. I want to hold Niki and tell her that it would all work out. That the pain and uncertainty will go away. That she will not not regret her decision.

At the time I thought Madeleine's foot was perfectly fine. It had all five toes. It wasn't that small even though it was a tiny bit shorter than her other foot. Her leg seemed very normal to me. Sometimes I would almost convince myself that her leg was really okay, that she could keep her foot and it would all work.

Now I know that that was untrue. I do not regret the amputation. In fact, I am relieved by it. Now that I see her fibular hemimelia leg the way it was I can see how deformed it was. How nonfunctional it really was. It was fine for a baby who was crawling, sitting up, pulling to stand even. But she is better off with her man-made (Greg-made) leg.

Goodnight friends.
Happy Birthday Max and Madeleine.
Peace and Love.