5 years ago today

I became a mother!!!  I had my oldest son by emergency c-section 5 years ago today.  I had pre-eclamsya which led to high blood pressure and severe swelling.  My blood pressure was at stroke level when Landon was finally taken.  He was a tiny baby only weighing 4lbs 10 ozs, he went straight to the NICU and I went straight to ICU.  I didn't get to touch or lay eyes on my tiny bundle of joy until he was 24 hours old.  He was so tiny and there were so many machines that he was hooked up to, just looking at him was scary.  He had a wonderful nurse that allowed me to lift him up just a little bit off of his little bed.  The emotions that ran through me were so overwhelming I didn't know if I was going to cry from happiness or cry because I was so worried, but either way the tears came in streams.

Even to this day thinking about the moment I became a mother makes me tear up and become very emotional.  This little boy has taught me so many things about myself and life in general that I don't think I would've ever learned on my own.

At 6 months old Landon was diagnosed with a rare birth defect in his right eye called PHPV(persistent hyper plastic primary vitreous), that was one of the most devastating days of my life!!  For months we had told his pediatrician that we thought something was wrong with our babies eye, he wouldn't open it for the first several weeks and when he finally did he would shriek in pain and we could see a white mass in his eye.  There is nothing like being told that your baby has a cataract in his eye, glaucoma, and will be blind with a very high chance of loosing his eye all together and will face several surgeries to repair the many things that this birth defect has caused.  There were so many thoughts that ran through my head, I blamed myself for a very long time because of this horrible thing.  A few weeks before Christmas our beautiful baby boy went through his first 2 surgeries.  He was such a trooper!!!  I think he gave us the strength we needed to pull our selves together and be strong.   Little did we know that our baby would end up having a total of 7 eye surgeries and 1 arm surgery before he was even 5 years old. 

He has done so many things that make me so proud and he is so full of love!!  He is probably the most loving little boy I have ever met, he will walk up and hug someone he's only known for 5 minutes and not even think twice about it.  He has opened my eyes and taught me how to love with every ounce of my being!!  I love you Landon and you make me so proud to be your Mommy!!!!  Happy Birthday baby boy, I hope that rest of your life is filled with smiles and TONS and TONS of love!!!

Look at those beautiful blue eyes and that beautiful smile!!  Oh how I love this boy!!!