Reflections

I started writing this Blog 4 years ago today!  March 25th, 2009 I sat down at my computer and typed out my very first blog post.  My baby was in the NICU and I was at home trying to find things to fill those lonely days, so I jumped on the bandwagon of blogging about my child’s life!  I had been reading a few friends’ blogs and thought it was neat that they were documenting the beginning years so I thought I’d do the same.  And so it began!  Four years, 737 Posts, 59,841 Page View’s later, I am SO glad I decided to start blogging. 

Before I became a Mom, I had such a great memory, I could remember anything.  Something happened in those 18 months that I carried 2 children and now my memory barely allows me to remember what I wore a week ago, what I ate a day ago, much less the ages that my Children cut their first teeth, slept through the night, and ate their first foods.  These are all memories that I hold so dear to me, I’d hate to lose them.  One of my best decisions as a Mom has been to start blogging about their lives.  I love to click back through my Archive and see what was going on at any given age/season/year past.

So I started blogging about Ryder being in the hospital and I suddenly didn’t feel so alone.  I knew people were reading my words and were praying for us so specifically and I KNOW that God heard everyone’s prayers.  Then when we finally got to bring him home I could feel people rejoicing with us through the computer.  There have been so many times that I have felt like “Oh I can’t wait to get home and blog about this!”.  His Kidney’s started healing themselves after his surgery and I loved sharing every second of this miracle with people that cared about us.

Of course there have also been times that I really didn’t want to blog because I didn’t want to face the reality of things that were happening.  But getting it out has been so therapeutic for me.  Exactly one year after I started blogging, March 25th, 2010 we had to take Ryder for an MRI of his brain to see why he wasn’t using his left side.  Two days later we received the news that he had a Stroke.  This started a whole new reality for our family, raising a child with special needs.  A rollercoaster filled with therapy, medical procedures, insurance battles, and uncertainties for the future.  We’ve come so far that I often forget all the challenges so being able to go back and read is like seeing God’s work unfold one phase at a time.

When I was pregnant with Ryder and the Doctor was telling us about the issues he was having with his kidneys, I was so afraid.  This is when my love/hate relationship with Google began.  I would spend countless hours at night researching, trying to ignore every bad thing I read but holding on to every glimpse of hope I would find.  They normally came in the form of other people’s blogs.  I would find a family going through something similar and start reading all about their journey.  I would cry for the ones whose baby didn’t make it, praying so hard that we wouldn’t have to face that same fate.  Thank God we didn’t.  So when we started noticing Ryder not using his left arm & leg, back to Google I went.  I would see the term “Cerebral Palsy” pop up every time I searched no matter how many times I tried to word my search differently and I would just click off of it really quick to trick myself into thinking I didn’t see it.  When we got the Left Hemiparesis diagnosis and found out it was a form of Cerebral Palsy I went blog searching.  I needed all the information I could find, I wanted to find children similar to Ryder and see what the future had in store for us.  Some gave me hope and some brought me to tears.  But I will forever be thankful for those families who shared their stories.  In those vulnerable moments I did not want to hear statistics or possible outcomes in medical terms, I needed real stories with real emotions from real people.  With those people in mind I’ve tried to do the same with this blog in hopes that if someone happens to be up Googling they might stumble across it and realize that there are really good outcomes to not so good situations!  Ryder’s disability does not define him so I only mention it as necessary, but we live life as normal and happy as anyone else!

Four years of blogging has given me the best baby book to pass down to my children if they ever want to know a detail about their childhood.  It has allowed our family and friends to keep up with us in ways they never would have been able to.  They have been able to be a part of every milestone our children have reached, that is so special to me!  It has also brought me so close to a group of people as we experience parenthood at the exact same time, we’ve become a support group for each other and I don’t know what I would do without those friendships!

So to my faithful followers, thank you for caring about us and for supporting us in our lives through this blog, for praying us through trying times and for cheering with us when we’ve overcome an obstacle.  I can’t believe it has been 4 years!