About thirty eight years ago, my brother and his wife were getting ready to welcome a new baby into the family.   This was very exciting for all of us.   I would be a first time Aunt and my mom and dad would become first time Grandparents. And it would be a first time Dad for my brother.  This was a  lot  of firsts for our family. I was the oldest child of my parents and had never given them a grandchild.  We were all over the moon.  My sister-in- law was as calm as a cucumber in all this excitement.  She was a real trooper .

I remember when my brother called me to tell me the news.  I answered the phone and he said, the rabbit died, I said what , what are you talking about?  Then it hit me,  I screamed  you’re having a baby!!!! He said yep in about nine months. I congratulated them and wished them the best.

It turned out to be seven months later , the little guy decided to come early and it was the slowest seven months of all our lives.   We rushed  to the hospital  to see this little miracle.  When we got there, there was some trouble with his breathing.   Well we started praying for this little guy, we had waited too long for him to even think about losing that precious baby.

For the next year, he was in and out of the hospital , when he was born,  he would try to take a bottle but couldn’t because of the acid in his stomach.   They ended up putting a tube in his stomach and fed him that way.  He spent most of his first year in and out of the hospital.. So they finally took him to Children’s  hospital in Lansing and the Dr’s put a tracheotomy tube in his neck.   Before  this he was one year old and could hardly sit up by himself and because of lack of oxogen, his skin had a blue tinge to it.   This procedure is the best thing they could have done for him.  In one months time, he was chubby and pink skinned looking healthy.  He was a happy little boy, and so were the rest of us.   He had a lot of health problems  through the years and everywhere they went, they had to carry a suction machine.    My  Sister-in-law waded through all of this with such calm and grace, and they both took such good care of him .    Later in life he had a problem where his stomach would be sucked up into his rib cage.  Because of this, he had to have surgery to pull the stomach back to where it was supposed to be,  he ended up having to have an esophageal wrap. I think he might have had that surgery at least twice.

A Doctor told us that he probably would not live to be an adult.   I’m here to tell you, prayer changes things. He is 38 years old today, and can get through a computer problem like nothing.  If any of us have a problems  with our phone , iPad or computer, we all call him for help.  Or if you can’t  find something on your TV, we call him then too, he has set up ROKU on all our TV’s .

He is and continues to be a blessing in our lives.  He is a gentleman and loves old people, which is good for us, we are all old.