Overwhelming Gratitude

I was on Candace Calvert’s Facebook page and she was having a drawing for sharing your ‘summer blessing’.  I thought for a minute.  Christopher is my summer blessing – he’s a July baby  – but that was three years ago.

And then the gratitude hit me.  It was just 3 weeks or so ago that I could have very easily lost him.  I hadn’t planned on changing his diaper before he went to bed.  He was dry when I changed him but he was complaining his tushie hurt.  It was while I was changing him that he was flat on his back and stopped breathing.  He didn’t respond.  I called 911.  By the time they answered, he’d roused.

But if he hadn’t complained about his tush, I would have put him in bed.  He would have been in his room, by himself [most likely, we’d talked about putting his mattress in our room but hadn’t decided for sure yet] and then stopped breathing.  What would have happened to my little man if he hadn’t had ‘strep butt’ [same bacteria as strep throat, different location ;)] and complained that it hurt?  Would he even be here today?

I spent a number of minutes overwhelmed at the mere thought of what could have happened to my sweet boy.  Small things that, literally, changed the course of my life – for the better this time.  I wonder sometimes what God has in store for him that he comes under such great attack – at least that’s how it seems.  Matt [and his mom?] shouldn’t have survived his childbirth in the mid-70s.  Without Matt, no Christopher.  Christopher wouldn’t have survived his first year as little as 60 or so years ago [the Nissen Fundoplication was first done in the mid-50s].  He struggled so much that first year even with the surgery, I can’t imagine what would have happened without it.

So in honor of my big boy – here’s a pic of him enjoying life!

[Okay – so it was Easter and he was mad he was getting his picture taken but still…  Think I’ll hug him extra tight in the morning before we head out on a day trip.  Have two books by Megan DiMaria for the road :).]