In the Beginning Part 3

The pregnancy seemed to go by quick and without any complications.  But that is easy for me to say considering I was not carrying around an extra 35 pounds on the front of my torso, being kept up at night with a baby kicking around inside, and suffering from bizarre cravings of food. The biggest problem I had was running out to the grocery store at 10 o’clock at night to get Debby some cheesy popcorn or ice cream she was craving.  Other than a few grocery store runs, my wife tossing and turning at night to get comfortable and listening to her bizarre craving, the pregnancy was a breeze for me.  My wife will probably have a different take on how everything went.  

The day finally arrived on a Thursday in December 1999.  The birth, like the pregnancy, went off without a hitch, but again that is easy for me to say.  My day was spent watching ESPN in the hospital room, running down to the cafeteria to get fresh baked cookies, and drinking lots of coffee to stay awake.   Although, during my wife’s huffing and puffing, and her high drama of pushing out a 9 pound 12 ounce baby boy she did manage to find time to vomit on me.   I just could not get out of the way fast enough, and it was a sign of things to come with a new born baby.  We gave our son the name Zachary, because we both really liked it and the middle name was Hamilton after my grandfather who was killed during WWII. 

Before leaving the hospital 48 hours later a pediatrician came to give Zach his first doctor’s visit and he told us we had a healthy baby.  As a father you dream of having a son, and any father who tells you different is lying or a fool.  Do not get me wrong, we want the child and mother to be healthy first, but then our focus is on hoping to have at least one boy.  Wanting a boy goes beyond having a child to carry on the family name.  Father’s dream and envision those special moments of tossing the football around in the backyard, going to hockey practice together, fishing on the river, and helping to fix things around the house. 

We had no idea at the time that the healthy baby boy we brought home from the hospital was not 100 percent healthy after all.  Zachary was harboring something from us that even he had no idea he was harboring. We did not notice anything was wrong until Zach got a little older, and reached some developmental milestones or struggled to achieve them. 

Eighteen months later our second child was born, Riley Simone, and she was not as big as Zachary, but she was not a lightweight either.  It was around this time that we started to notice Zachary was still struggling to form words, but in talking with our parents about it they did not seem to be alarmed by it.  My mother had three girls before I came along and she told me that I started talking later in age in comparison to my sisters.  You could see, so we thought, that Zach was making a lot of sounds in an attempt to form words, but nothing was coming out other than noise.  At Zach’s 2 year check up with the pediatrician I raised the question about Zach’s lack of speech development.  Our pediatrician at the time said to me, “Eric, your son is no different than any other typical 2 year old boy that comes walking in my office.  They make a lot of noise trying to create words, but the words will come out soon.  Be patient.”   Needless to say, my patience was getting thin, because something was not right.