J’s surprise 15th birthday party was a huge success. Great fun.

She REALLY wanted a BlackBerry for her birthday but we all totally had her convinced that she definitely wouldn’t be getting such an extravagant gift. But then we got her one. And she was SHOCKED – and really, really excited, as you can see

Opening presents with a little (unhelpful) help from C and NC

Birthday cake (Cousin NC blew out most of the candles before J had a chance. Classic NC)

J and E’s stepmama, M with Baby G.

Today is my gorgeous, amazing, supersmart, kind and sensitive daughter J’s 15th birthday. She is everything I ever could have hoped for in a daughter, and I love getting to be her mama.

Happy birthday sweetie!

Every year on Jane’s birthday, I republish this essay, below, which I wrote when she was a toddler (and which was published in this anthology in 2007). Every year, when I read it again, I am reminded of what might have been, and of how much I struggled with my decision. I feel profoundly grateful that I made the choice I did, but also profoundly grateful that I am raising Jane, and now her two younger sisters, in a country where the choice was MINE to make.

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THE DECISION

By Katie Allison Granju (all rights reserved)

I began to suspect that something was very wrong the day I could no longer walk across the library at the law school where I was a first year student. Ten weeks pregnant, I had been fighting excessive fatigue, loss of appetite and night sweats for almost a month.

“Relax,” my midwife told me. “You’re just having a rough first trimester.”

I was inclined to believe her. At age 27 and in perfect health, I had no reason to consider that anything more than extreme morning sickness was plaguing me, and that was no big deal. Heck, with my first pregnancy, three years previously, I had felt so good that I had even wished for a little first-trimester yukkiness so that I could feel “really pregnant.”

Still, the nagging feeling that something other than just the pregnancy was going on grew stronger with each wretched day. The afternoon when I found myself collapsed in a chair in the law library brought the situation to a head. A classmate had to practically carry me to her car so that she could drive me home. There, she insisted on taking my temperature: 104′.

Within hours, I was admitted to the maternity floor at a local hospital, where I spent the next eight unhappy days. Each afternoon, just to make sure that all was well, the obstetrician would perform an ultrasound, showing us the tiny “beep, beep” of the fetal heart and the jerky movements of a glowing human jumping bean. We began calling the baby “Peanut.” My doctor was puzzled as test after test failed to determine what the cause of my illness could be. He brought in an infectious disease specialist, who tested me for everything from HIV to Malaria.

On the sixth day of my confinement, as I was lying miserably in my hospital bed, watching a rerun of the Andy Griffith show, both of my doctors suddenly entered my room, closed the door and turned off the TV without asking. Now I knew for certain that I had been right; something was terribly wrong.

They had come to inform me that I had an acute, primary cytomegolovirus infection, popularly known as CMV. The disease is not generally something to worry about….unless you are immunocompromised, which I wasn’t….or pregnant, which I was. CMV, we were told by the obstetrician, is very dangerous to a fetus, particularly in the first trimester. It is a leading cause of congenital neurologic impairment, severe physical anomalies, devastating mental retardation and infant fatality. Really, we were told, we should consider our “options”.

Suddenly, I, a person with all her grandparents still alive, a person who had never even been to a funeral, was faced with death. Not only was I faced with death in the abstract, I was faced with The Decision. In consultation with my with my sweet, 26 year old husband, a man similarly unschooled in the ways of mortality, I was charged with handing down a judgment as to whether Peanut would continue to leap and hop about in my womb and ultimately, be born alive. With a somber face, the doctor uttered the words that were to become so familiar to us over the next weeks, “Now, no one can make this decision for you. Only you can decide.”

Only, I couldn’t. Not without more information. And maybe not even then. We immediately became experts on CMV and its potential sequelae. I stayed up all night for days after the diagnosis, reading medical literature and searching the World Wide Web for answers. None was forthcoming. The best information available told us that if we carried the pregnancy to term, there was approximately a 1 in 4 chance that an infected baby would be affected by the CMV in some way. I was paralyzed with grief and indecision.

As an ostensibly pro-choice woman, I realized that I was not actually “pro”- anyone ever having to make a choice like this. Although no one wanted to offer an opinion as to what we should do, everyone had an angle. My doctor answered my questions honestly and told me that if his wife or daughter were faced with a CMV diagnosis in the first trimester, he would definitely encourage an abortion.

The minister whom a friend sent to see me was gentle and kind. Yet, she assumed that I was crying because I had already made the obvious decision to have an abortion and was grieving. She offered to set a time for a memorial service after the abortion to “celebrate and remember”. She even showed me the feminist liturgy she had photocopied for just such an occasion. I found her point of view strangely repulsive and without intellectual honesty. If the life I would be taking was worthy of religious remembrance and ceremony, how was it possibly mine to take? There are no memorial services for appendectomies or squashed bugs. Only for people.

I was hesitant to share my dilemma with a certain close relative because I feared her unbending anti-abortion stance. Of course, she immediately realized the decision with which I was faced after someone told her of my diagnosis. She telephoned me to instruct me that, although abortion is wrong, sometimes God realizes that the time is not right for a particular soul to come into this world. Considering the circumstances, she opined, no one could blame me for whatever decision I felt was right. Her stunning hypocrisy angered me. Despite her stated views, she was conveniently able to allow for choice in this issue when the woman in question was someone she loved.

As days passed and I wrestled with my conscience, I realized that I was petrified of the physical procedure itself. My doctor assured me that he could perform the abortion at the hospital. I wouldn’t have to go sit in a waiting room at a clinic. I told him that, although I realized that most first and early second trimester abortions are performed under local anesthesia, the only way I could face this would be knocked out cold. He agreed. I knew that I could be admitted to the hospital, drift gently off to sleep and wake up, relieved of this problem forever. I would never have to think about it again if I chose not to. Variously, this sounded tremendously appealing and completely horrifying.

When I envisioned the actual opening of my womb and suctioning of its contents, the same primal instinct kicked in that would allow me to single-handedly rip the lungs out of any man who laid a hand on my little boy. What kind of terrible mother would allow her defenseless offspring to be taken from the very bosom of maternal safety and warmth? I felt sick, and wept yet again.

My father tried to reason with me, pointing out the lifelong ramifications of my decision. He was terribly worried that I would be forever shackled to the responsibilities of caring for a severely ill or disabled child. He fretted that his big plans for his own child would be sucked away forever by a draining responsibility from which I could never escape. I too was seized with these fears. I secretly believed that I simply wasn’t up to the task of mothering a child with serious health and developmental problems. What would that do to our other child, whom I already knew and loved? What would it do to my career goals? Our marriage? And what about the baby? The thought of seeing our tiny baby, suffering, perhaps hooked up to tubes and wires in a neonatal intensive care unit, caused me almost unbearable psychic pain. I imagined a future in which our mentally retarded and physically handicapped 13 year old child would endure the cruel taunts of other teenagers.

I began to wonder if I was being selfish in even considering giving birth to this baby. Would anyone choose for herself the life that this child might face? Were my own fears about a relatively minor surgery and future guilt good enough reasons to bring forth a human being who would have to live with the consequences of my own cowardice? I tentatively decided that motherhood is full of tough calls and hard decisions, both in the name of love and in a child’s best interests. This must be one of them, I thought. I would do what was best for all concerned.

I telephoned the hospital, as instructed by my physician, and weakly scheduled the procedure for the next day. The admitting clerk who took the call easily misunderstood my vague instructions and thought that I was coming in for labor induction of a full-term, healthy pregnancy. “Congratulations,” she said brightly. I corrected her mistake and her tone grew dark, almost menacing. She told me to meet my doctor at the labor and delivery wing at 6:30 a.m. sharp the following morning. She abruptly hung up.

There, I thought to myself. I have done the right thing. No turning back. I felt like someone had drained all the life from me. I sat in a darkened room for the next several hours, absently rubbing my still flat belly and murmuring maternal expressions of comfort to no one in particular. Later that evening, my husband and I discussed the choice that had been made. I attempted stoicism. He reminded me that we had a friend coming over to bring us supper, as many kind people had done throughout my illness and convalescence at home. I roused myself enough to get dressed and out of bed.

Our friend arrived and we all ate supper together. I told her of my decision and the reasons behind it. She listened quietly and then asked if she could tell us a little about her brother, who had died recently at the age of nine. She recounted a tale of extraordinary courage on the part of her parents, her sister, herself, and especially, on the part of a little boy with Down Syndrome named David. This child and this family had lived through all of the things I feared when I considered birthing my own baby, including David’s eventual early death. Still, the joy and love of his brief existence canceled out all of the pain, fear and hurt. No one who knew David had any regrets. Our friend showed us his photograph: a beautiful and smiling tow-headed little boy, obviously mentally retarded.

Neither do I have any regrets about the decisions I made after that discussion. I never arrived at the hospital the next morning. I canceled the abortion and after a pregnancy alternating between exhilaration and despair, gave birth to my daughter, Elizabeth Jane Chevillard Granju on August 15th, 1995. She was born ten days early weighing 6 pounds and eleven ounces. She was born infected with congenital cytomegolovirus and had two seizure episodes in her first year. Since that time, however, she has been physically and developmentally normal in every way. She is also a strikingly beautiful child, with shiny dark hair, olive skin and a lithe, elfin figure.

Jane’s epilepsy could conceivably worsen and she is at risk for other neurologic problems and progressive hearing loss until she leaves childhood behind. Still, she is remarkably healthy. Many people want to extract a moral from this story. Pro-life friends tell me that Jane is my gift from God for making the right choice. They want to hold my baby up as their own personal anti-abortion poster child.

Those who are pro-choice attempt to use the tale as a cautionary parable for why choice should be the focus of the debate, rather than abortion itself. After all, I was able to carefully consider each of my options and ultimately, have the final say. This wouldn’t have been possible in another political context. My own views have become less reactionary and more cognizant of the complexity of the abortion issue. I continue to fear the slippery slope that we head down when we deny women the right to choose when and how we bear children. On the other hand, I no longer attempt to repudiate the fact that the graphic posters displayed by anti-abortion activists are real photographs of what really comes out of the uterus during an abortion. Many abortions do indeed “stop a beating heart,” as the bumper sticker says.

However, I will not allow Jane to be used as a crucible for the views of any person or group. I know that I would love Jane just as much if she had been born severely disabled. I do not, however, deny the relief I feel that she is so radiantly well. I am deeply aware that I was graced with this experience, which has allowed me to see that the blessing is sometimes as much in the struggle, from which I have learned so much, as in the outcome.

COPYRIGHT KATIE ALLISON GRANJU – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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A few more shots of J and some of her best friends taken last week by Hannah Sexton Davis . I really love the way this photographer uses light in her work. I’d like to get her to take some shots of my other children as well.

This has been the hardest summer of J’s young life – a season she will never, ever forget. She and Henry were exceptionally close. Her loss is profound. She has suddenly gone from being the little sister to the oldest child in our family. I am happy that even in the midst of all the hurt she’s faced recently, she has also managed to have some great fun with her friends this summer. And I’m grateful that she has such terrific friends – two of whom were with her when she did this photoshoot. I love all of these girls a lot. They and their families have really held Jane’s hand through the loss of her big brother and I can never thank them enough.

A few of my favorite pics of Henry and his little sister J together. They adored one another, always.

J will be 15 in less than two weeks. I can’t believe it. For some reason, 15 seems like a big milestone year to me.

She’s a wonderful person. I am very proud of her.

(Thanks to photographer Hannah Sexton Davis for allowing me to publish her photography here on my blog)

Today Jon, J, G and I drive down to Chattanooga to watch E and his cousin J play in a middle school lacrosse tournament at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (G’s first LAX game!). C stayed in Knoxville and played with cousin NC, and also spent much of the day with Jon’s parents. J and E’s dad drove down to Chattanooga too, so we all watched E play, and we went out to lunch together at a favorite pizza spot, Lupi’s in downtown Chattanooga, just a block away from the Tennessee Aquarium.


Two of my three girls – J and Baby G with me at Lupi’s.

E on the field, wearing mouthgard (that’s why his teeth look blue)

Baby G on my shoulder at the restaurant, looking like a cross between Mr. Magoo and an angry raisin.

J and her dad at Lupi’s

J, C, E and G all together for the first time after G’s surprise early birth. Missing Henry. There should be five present and accounted for. We all know it.

C is a very sweet-natured, easygoing two year old in general. But she’s been through A LOT in the past 10 months – too much. As a testament to her naturally easy going temperament, she held it together through my hospitalization last fall (we hadn’t ever been separated that much – not by a longshot) and then through the nearly 4 months that I was barely functional and often in bed due to killer “morning” sickness. She was calm and patient as I next spent five solid weeks at Henry’s bedside in the hospital, meaning she was separated from me constantly and when we were together, I was distracted, worried and sad. Then, on May 31, she lived through the devastating death of her oldest brother and the grief that enveloped our household, including seeing me essentially take to my bed for two weeks.

After that, only a few weeks later, her baby sister was born at only 35 weeks . G’s early birth by c-section meant that I spent 5 days in the hospital with the new baby, once again separated from C, who is still a baby herself. It’s just been far too much for anyone to handle, much less a toddler. Now, finally, C is not holding it together so well. She’s understandably showing the strain of everything our family has been through since last October.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s exceptionally sweet directly toward her baby sister. It’s toward the REST of us that she’s is showing her frustration. For the first time ever, she’s kicking and hitting at her cousins, her older siblings and at Jon and me. She’s throwing real, honest to goodness temper tantrums for the first time. She’s whining like crazy (although that’s starting to let up some). She’s just REALLY, REALLY mad and she’s obviously finally letting off some pent-up steam – some very, very pent-up steam.

My sister pointed out the other day that I was being too snappish with her when she melts down, so I am now trying much harder to be as gentle and understanding as I can be. Jon and I are also working hard to normalize her daily routine after so much uncertainty and being shuffled around in recent months. But she just doesn’t have the words or the emotional resources to explain to us how stressed she’s been, so falling apart is all she can do. Dealing with her tantrums and anger have been trying for the rest of us in the family in the past two weeks, but I hope that finally letting it all out is giving her some relief. I am very proud of how sweet and patient E and J are being with her, even when she’s being really cranky with them.

Henry (age 3) was really furious when J came home from the hospital. He developed a weird nervous tic for several months and for a short time, he literally refused to look at me or speak to me any time I was holding his little sister. After about a month or so, he fell in love with her and after that, they were always as close as two siblings could be. Then, both Henry (age 6 at the time) and J (age 2) were just thrilled when E was born. They never showed any stress to speak of. The three of them became a tight unit for the next decade. My three babies – for many years, I never imagined there would be a fourth or a fifth!

I have to admit that I was REALLY worried when C was born in 2007 because she was a newcomer to that threesome of siblings who were now 15, 12 and 9 years old. During my pregnancy with C, Henry and J were not happy AT ALL that I was having a new baby. In fact, all three musketeers were incredibly embarrassed at the idea that their mom was having a baby NINE YEARS after the last baby joined the family. Henry was flat out angry about it – something about which I felt terribly guilty at the time. Once C arrived, however, J and E were immediately smitten with their little sister. It took Henry a while to come around. But once C could babble and reach for him, he began to melt; he totally fell for his baby sister. And she was just nuts about Henry. C loved him very much.

Now we’ve brought G home only 34 months after C joined our family (yes, she is definitely our last)… And Henry is gone – he just missed his newest baby sister in this time zone. But I know they will see one another again, and I like to think that they were together before she was born. On the day Henry died, I sat on his bed with his feet and legs in my lap and felt G kick against them, through my very pregnant belly. On that day, the two of them were connecting physically for the first and only time. As their mother, this was both beautiful and terrible for me to experience, but they touched each other. That will always be meaningful to me.

But back to poor C….she’s just completely overwhelmed at the moment.

Did your toddler melt down when a new baby came home? Tell me about it and tell me how you helped him or her through the transition. I’d love to hear from others who have dealt with their own Very Angry Toddler.

It’s 11 pm, which means that Baby G has now been out of my belly and in my arms for just about 24 hours. And I have yet to sleep!

Jon is asleep on the fold out sleeper chair next to my hospital bed, and G is snoozing in the little bassinet on the other side – which explains why I haven’t yet slept. You see, the hospital where I gave birth  doesn’t allow newborns to stay in the room if both parents are asleep. In order for the baby to stay and not be taken to the well-baby nursery, at least one adult has to be awake – with lights on – at all times. And since Jon is asleep, I am fighting sleep myself because even though I’m sure they would take excellent care of her in the nursery, I don’t like being away from her. I know that I’m going to have to cave in soon, though. Even the post-birth euphoria that’s kept me awake this long can’t last much longer.

Since I am exhausted and feeling spacy, I probably can’t manage a truly organized and coherent blog post, so here are some odds and ends from our first 24 hours since G arrived:

• For those who have asked or are curious, yes, I did have a c-section.  My labor went from Braxton Hicks contractions to REALLY strong contractions in just a few hours. Brethine and stadol failed to stop or even slow down the contractions.  So for several reasons ( I will write a longer birth story later), including the fact that G was transverse breech and the very powerful, nonstop contractions were stressing my previous c-section scar, my doctor advised us to go ahead and have a c-section. Forty five minutes later – at 11:45 pm last night, G arrived via a relatively uneventful surgery.

• G was technically 34 weeks gestation when she was born. She would have been 35 weeks if she had made it to midnight before her delivery.

• She weighed 5 lbs and 7.5 ounces and was 18 inches long. She’s TEENSY. But unlike some babies who come early (including C, who was born at 36 weeks in 2007), she doesn’t look undercooked or like a preemie. Instead she just looks like a miniature, perfectly formed china doll, with sweet little features and quite a bit of wavy, very blonde hair. She is GORGEOUS.

• She needed a bit of supplemental oxygen for a few hours after birth, so Jon and I had to wait to have her with us until 3-4 am in the morning after the c-section. She’s been breathing wonderfully since then. That’s great news because at 34-35 weeks, we weren’t sure how her lungs would be. We’re really lucky.

• That’s the good news. The bad news is that like many late-term premature babies, she is veeeeery sleepy and her sucking reflex is underdeveloped. So breastfeeding is not going well (understatement).  She and I are really struggling to get nursing going.  Even for me -  someone who has successfully breastfed several other children, and who has helped lots of other women get started nursing their babies – this is really a challenging situation.  She’s simply too tired to latch on and actually eat.  And making matters more complicated, she also has had issues with unstable body temperature and blood sugar levels (both also common problems for late term preemies). So we have to get calories into her.  It’s crucial. Without energy, she can’t wake up enough to nurse. It’s a vicious cycle. At one point today, we were warned that if we didn’t see some improvement in her feeding and blood sugar,  she might have to be sent to the special care nursery for a day or three to get things stabilized. The thought of being separated from her in an acute care hospital setting was REALLY upsetting to me.  So I broke down and explained to the nurse who had taken her blood sugar about recently losing Henry, and she was absolutely wonderful. She told me she would do whatever she could to help us get the blood sugar issue turned around – and she did.  This nurse spent the next 45 minutes showing me how to use my finger plus a syringe (to avoid nipple confusion while she;s learning to breastfeed) to get a mix of my pumped milk plus high calorie formula into G’s little tummy. An hour later, her blood sugar reading was the best it had been all day. And since that time, this nurse’s technique has allowed me to keep her well-fed enough to stay out of the NICU.  She still isn’t really getting enough, and I’m still not half as good at it as that nurse is, but we’re hanging in there. I also keep G skin to skin as much as possible to keep her temperature up, and so I can try to nurse her every time she looks even remotely awake enough. Unfortunately, I really wasn’t able to get her to latch on even one time today. But I think that if I just keep trying as she grows and becomes more awake, we will eventually get there.  Between the pumping, the nursing attempts and the finger-plus-syringe feedings, keeping her fed is a very time consuming proposition at this point. Her weight is now at 5lbs 4ozs, so she hasn’t lost too much. That’s good. Tomorrow I hope to get a clearer idea from the pediatrician of how her feeding will have to look in order for her to go home (I am hoping for Thursday at the latest).

• Today J (staying with her dad and stepmom while I am hospitalized)  and C (staying with Jon’s wonderful parents) both came to meet their new baby sister for the first time. It was magical for me to see each of my girls with G, and to realize that I am now the lucky mother of THREE beautiful daughters. J came to the hospital with two of her best friends, and I loved seeing the big girls oohing and aahing over G. J seemed so proud, and loved holding her new baby sister. C came into the room yelling “where is my baby sister!?” and was absolutely THRILLED to finally meet Georgia. She couldn’t keep her hands off of her, but I could tell that she is also a little stressed. We’ve had so much happening in our family lately, and she’s had to spend more time away from her mama than any two year old should. But her grandparents are so amazing and she is so close to them that I think she is mostly doing okay. Still, I can’t wait to get home, get the kids home, and try to settle in as the radically reconfigured family that we are.

• E still doesn’t know that G was born last night! I tried several times today to get him on the phone at camp but wasn’t successful because he was out hiking all day. I think we now have a plan where he’ll be calling me first thing in the morning so I can tell him. He is going to be SO EXCITED.  (He will probably be equally excited to hear about the surprise baby guinea pigs)

• G’s other hospital visitors today included Aunt Betsy, cousins E, M and NC and  Uncle Robert and Aunt Nicole, plus cousins A, H and N (their J is away at camp as well, so he wasn’t here).  Dr. Neighbor also came, along with the Hickman grandparents, plus C and M (who are Henry, J and E’s father and stepmother). It was a busy day. All agreed that G is an absolutely beautiful baby who radiates a peaceful, warm vibe that puts a smile on everyone’s face. She’s a special baby; we all sense it.

• Today was an amazing day for me. Starting last night, while I was lying on the operating table just before the c-section, I sensed Henry’s actual presence with me for the very first time since his death. And he’s remained with me all day today, encouraging me to fall in love with his new baby sister, born two months to the day after he was first admitted to the hospital.  When I hold G in my arms, I feel Henry with me in a really intense way.  It’s extremely comforting and has brought me a level of peace with the loss of my son that I hadn’t experienced even one bit before G’s birth. It’s been an extremely emotionally intense 24 hours, and I love Henry even more than I did before.

This week, E is at camp, J is at her dad’s for the week (the kids alternate weeks between their two houses) and C went with Jon to the beach for four days to spend some time with the Hickman side of the fam.

And Henry is gone.

That accounts for my whole family, so I am alone at home for the week, except for the hours I am at work. I am actually kind of glad to have the time all by myself to think and be sad and write, but I do miss everyone. Especially Henry. The house is very, very quiet. (Before anyone worries about me saying I am alone in the house on the interwebs, I will add that I am alone BUT FOR my giant, male Great Pyrenees dog, Leo, who doesn’t like people who aren’t supposed to be near the house coming near the house, and I have the alarm system turned on when I am here and when I am not, so….)

Here are some photos Jon sent me of C in South Carolina yesterday. She – like everyone on my side of the family, particularly us girls – absolutely loooooves the beach.