ELEVEN!

Wow! Tomorrow, December 17th, 2013, Cody Jensen will turn 11 years old! I guess I don't have to say that time flies. Shoot, I'm saying it anyway, time.flies.

Today, Cody had an appointment with his Neurologist...you know, the one I really don't like. The one that said all those years ago about how she wasn't God and blah, blah, blah. I've learned to tolerate her. Simply because she is a smart woman (well, medically speaking she is) and Cody really loves her so I try to be more like he is and just love the woman. Anyway, while she was giving him a once over, I was so impressed on some of his achievements that he has made since our appointment with her last year. He was getting up on his tippie toes, that folks, has always been impossible for Cody Jensen. He was mature with her. His conversation was mature. His speech is tough and delayed but he was talking with such maturity that it almost knocked me out of my chair. She got him. He got her. I was no longer needed there. Please don't pity me on that! I have gotten down on my knees and prayed, no, I have begged for God to give that gift to Cody. The gift of being heard. The gift of his voice. I did not have to repeat every sentence that he spoke back to her so that she would understand what he was saying. For Cody's entire life I have had to speak for him. I have gotten so used to repeating each sentence just so that A. he was understood and B. so that he didn't have to suffer the embarrassment and frustration of hearing 'Huh?'. I was and still am blown away.

So that brings me to eleven years ago. I know that as a parent, we love to reminisce each year on our child's birthday and I would like to do the same. As much as I cherish that chapter in my life, each year the wound is ripped wide open again and I'm stuck in the middle of this mix of pain and joy. So, I'm inclined to go there and talk about it. I feel like it helps me heal once again but then again it also reminds me on a much deeper level than day to day, what a blessing Cody Jensen is. Plus, I want to be able to share his story with him as he gets older. So, the more I talk about it, the better I can recite every incredible detail.
On this night, eleven years ago my world was obviously about to be rocked. Derrick and I were scheduled for an induction as Cody was due on Christmas Day and with the high risk nature or actually, I would call it more of a big, giant question mark surrounding the birth of our first son, we opted to induce a week early. We knew Cody would have Clubfeet, but according to our amnio, Cody would otherwise be 'normal'. A word I would grow to despise more than any other word in the history of words. Derrick and I felt prepared. I had read everything I could get my hands on regarding Clubfeet and knew the process we would be taking. I felt confident and comfortable.
At 9:04pm on December 17, 2002 Cody Ryan Jensen was born. He weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces and was just as gorgeous as the sunrise. Praise God, for close to 24 hours Derrick and I (and our amazing family and friends) got to be perfectly oblivious to anything and everything that would come to be. Fast forward to December 19th and well....everything stayed in fast forward. It was like being in the middle of a tornado and there wasn't a dang thing I could do to hold on. I didn't get to bring my baby home from the hospital. Instead, they brought him to me in an incubator and let me touch his little precious fingers before they transported him by ambulance to the NICU in Springdale. We left the hospital with an empty car seat and walked into our home without our son. That moment was so life changing. The doctors had sent us home to drop all of our hospital stuff off while they got Cody transported and setup in the NICU. Derrick grabbed the disposable camera (yeah, it was a decade ago!) and we took a selfie, went to Walmart and had it developed and took it with us. We put it in his crib so that when we went home at night, Cody still had his mom and dad there with him. They also sent me home with a cloth doll to wear inside of my shirt so that my scent would be on it and it would stay with him when I wasn't there, so he was constantly smelling me. They were out of blue dolls so Cody got pink. I still swear to this day that is the reason he loves pink! :)
At three days old he had his first of 11 surgeries and he spent his first Christmas in the NICU. Those first days in the NICU Derrick and I were just learning how to breathe again, and well, teaching us how to become parents on the fast track...on this very, very special track. After Derrick and I passed our overnight test with Cody (staying in the hospital with him) Cody was discharged on New Year's Eve 2002. What a special gift!
The first year of Cody's life was almost literally spent in the hospital between the Shriner's Hospital in St. Louis, the NWAMC - Springdale and ACH Little Rock. It was full of some of the most beautiful moments and yet it was still full of some of the lowest moments in my life. At first, we were so consumed with learning how to handle colostomy bags and cast changes and pressure points and pre and post surgeries that we couldn't concentrate on much else. What seemed like endless nights with your child in hospital rooms and surgeries and iv's and meds is enough to drive a person to a place that is far beyond insanity. And yet, that is where my survival mode for myself and Cody turned into the greatest blessing -- it is where Motherhood began for me. Don't get me wrong, the place, past insanity, left me with scars. It left Derrick with scars. But, it also gave us the gift of who Cody really is to us. This child that gives a part of himself to everyone that can't even be described with the word love. It gave us the gift of being able to see past 'as long as the baby is healthy' and know that without a shadow of a doubt that Cody, with every physical and emotional scar we have endured, that HE has endured, is everything a parent needs in a child. Yes, there are many, many times that my heart shatters at the thought of what he has been through. What he will go through. Some of the things that he may miss out on. But that is stupid. And that is the place, past insanity, that Satan tries to take me to to keep me from seeing the beauty and the gift in all of this.
My world, the entire world, is such a better place with Cody in it. He certainly is a special needs child. In eleven years, he has spread his 'special' to so many people. He doesn't even know it. How his innocence and his genuine love for everyone is so perfect for the dark and the ugly that is trying to consume our world. I guess that is the only sad part, he just doesn't know how wonderfully made he really is and the joy he brings to so, so many people. Thank God for Cody Jensen.

Happy 11th Birthday my sweet, sweet boy. You are something. Keep on keepin' on because you continue to amaze your momma!

I included just a few pictures of Cody as a baby. Gosh, he was so dang cute.