"It's blue! The stick is blue!" (OK, maybe I added another adjective there.) How could anything being blue change my life forever?!? It did. I was not planning on another pregnancy. I had my life planned out. I was a stay-at-home mom and had finally gotten everyone to sleep all night, was able to keep my head above the laundry on a regular basis, I could bathe daily again, and besides, I only had two bedrooms for kids!! How can anyone be in control with more kids than they have bedrooms?!?

But it was blue and that was the day that changed all others. That was the day I began to learn the real lessons of life. I was a different person back then. I literally went to bed and cried for two days because I would have to make my girls share a room. I was racked with worry about how I would be able to remain a "homeroom mother" with a new baby. How would I be able to attend field trips and be an active member of the PTA? That was the kind of mom I was. I did all that stuff. I was in control. Little did I know that within a year my worries would change from those 'serious' concerns to thoughts of whether a little boy with only one half of a brain would ever know who I was and how much I loved him.

I knew something was wrong during the pregnancy but I didn't know what it was. I got very sick about 2 weeks after the 'blue stick' incident. I didn't have normal morning sickness like I had experienced with the second baby. I just couldn't seem to eat anything. I didn't have the strength. Just getting out of the bed was too much for me. In fact, I could hardly raise my head off the pillow. I ended up in the hospital with dehydration that the doctor kept saying was a result of me throwing up from morning sickness. I kept trying to tell him that it wasn't morning sickness but he really didn't listen and I was not very aggressive because it was just too taxing to be aggressive when I really wanted to lay down. Even when I felt better and returned home, the feelings that all was not right did not leave me. I prayed that God would understand my heart - that I didn't plan this baby and I had worried about how having him would disrupt my life but I really wanted him and loved him. I had some spotting early on and I begged God to let me keep this baby. - Not another baby later on - but this baby. He was mine and I loved him dearly. Things got better but I still carried the feeling that something was not quite right.

Jonathan Cale was born on May 10, 1988. I had an amniocentesis the day before to make sure he was ready to be born. (My first daughter had been breech so I had three C-sections.) The one thing I will always remember about the first few minutes of his life was that he was crying and his Dad had him. He held him close to my face and I said, "Hi, buddy. It's OK. I'm your Mom and I love you." He stopped crying, turned his little face to me and looked at me. Somehow he understood the connection we would always have.

His sisters, Miranda (7 years old at the time) and Brandy (4 years old) loved having a new baby in the house. I think Miranda was especially happy to have a brother. Brandy loved him but was more interested in playing outside than being in with a crying baby. Cale watched them and laughed at any attention they gave him. The first few months seemed wonderful, the girls were at home and it was a sweet time. Still, at six weeks, when I had his picture taken, it was obvious that Cale would not turn his head past midpoint to the left. We'd get him looking straight ahead and he would turn back to the right. The photographer said, "Something is wrong with this baby. You need to find out what it is." I was so angry. How dare her say something was wrong with my baby?! What did she know?! I told my mom and sister about it and I was so outraged that I didn't notice that they wondered if there were a problem too.

A few weeks later, I asked his pediatrician about it and he began sending us to a physical therapist for torticollis (a tight neck muscle). I think deep down I knew it was just the 'tip of the iceberg'. I remember sending the girls to Wednesday night church service with my parents and staying home to rock Cale and put him to bed. I kept rocking him and crying, thinking how stupid it was to cry about a tight neck muscle. So began our physical therapy sessions. Life went on until he was about 5 and a half months old.