Meet the Smiths

Okay, I am joining the blog world, so please be patient with me as I am learning as I go!!  Just a little background about us.  My name is Megan.  I am a speech pathologist for Amite County School District, but my real full time job is wife to Kris and Mama to Madeline and Chandler.  I love to read, cook, and travel.  Kris or as some people call him, "Spoon" is a fireman in McComb who loves to hunt.  And it seems there is always some kind of hunting season anytime of the year!! 

Our first born daughter, Madeline, is 2 1/2 and is the sweetest and sassiest thing ever!  She can be so sweet and hard headed too "my do by myself"..hmmm wonder where she gets that from?!?  (I like to say her Daddy!)  We are constantly amazed by all that she knows, which is quite comical at times.  She is always asking questions and is extremely curious.  She doesn't forget anything which isn't always a good thing especially when bribing!  Some of the things she likes now are:  Elmo, coloring/toloring, reading books and being read to, playing outside, and riding the four wheeler and lawnmower with her Daddy.  She knows her colors, some of the alphabet, and can count to ten.  She loves to shop with her Shimmy (Aunt Kimberly) and to see people "Mama who dat?"  She has certainly blessed our lives more than we know, and we can't imagine our lives would be like without her or her sister in it!!  She is very proud of her little "sissy" and already very protective of her!

Which brings us to Madeline's sister, Chandler.  Our second miracle entered our lives on September 12, 2012.  She looks JUST LIKE her big sister did with big cheeks and a head full of dark hair.  We honestly thought we were having a boy and would have bet that she was a he, but we wouldn't trade her for a million boys!!  She is the best baby (unlike her sissy, sorry Madeline!!) and loves to cuddle.  One of the main reasons I started a blog was so that I could keep up with the girls, but to also document Chandler's life. 

In order to get to where we are today I am going to go back a little bit so that you know how we got to where we are today.  Let's go back to May when we had our 20 week sonogram.  Since we didn't find out Madeline's sex, we weren't finding out this time either.  This is such a special surprise and until you have done it, don't give us a hard time :)  Our doctor came in after the sonogram and said that the sonographer had found something wrong with the baby's kidneys.  He wasn't worried and said that this may even correct itself but not to google it because we might figure out the sex.  He referred us to Dr. Perry in Jackson for a more detailed sonogram.  Our appointment was June 5th.  The sonographer came in and looked at everything on our baby and then Dr. Perry came in and did the same thing.  He told us that yes our baby had something wrong with the kidneys but also had a hole in the heart.  What?!  A hole in the heart, what does that mean?!  That's when the words Down syndrome were mentioned because these were two characteristics.  But I am only 32 year old, what are you talking about?!?  He then said we could have an amniocentesis done which is 99.9% accurate.  Hello--a needle in my belly, um nooooo!!!  He then told us he wanted us to come back in two days and see Dr. Shores who is a pediatric cardiologist.  Well, of course we had a lot to process!  This was certainly not the news we were expecting, at all!  Dr. Shores was very thorough and explained things so that we could understand.  Yes, our baby does have a hole in the heart and it is called atrioventricular canal (AV canal) and she used the words complete common and mild--whew, it was nice to get the best news possible!  Our baby would require surgery between 4 to 6 months old and would have to be a certain weight.  But the words Down syndrome were brought up again--AV canal is very common in children with Down syndrome.  The only difference between a baby with and without Down syndrome is that a baby with DS normally has a weak suck so it would be harder to get the caloric intake needed to have surgery--that's the only difference!  So then came the time to make the decision about the amnio and we decided to have it done.  I won't go into any gory details but they all bragged on me saying I was a big girl and did great.  It was scary, but I am still alive and Kris didn't pass out!  It took 10 days to get the results back, 10 days!!  That may not sound like a lot but to us it felt like an eternity!!  I found it hard to pray--how do you say "please don't give me a child with special needs or help me understand."  I questioned myself as a mother and could I do it, could I do everything needed for this child?  We had the fear of the unknown with Madeline, but this was completely different.  In the back of my mind I kept saying there is a 50/50 chance and we will be in the 50% chance of not not having Down syndrome.  Come to find out, Kris had already accepted it-no wonder he was so calm about everything!  So on the morning of June 18, Dr. Perry called with the news:  "Megan, your baby does have Down syndrome."  I really have no idea what else he said other than we are here for you and Kris and that he was putting a notebook in the mail.  Now keep in mind that I am a speech pathologist and have treated children with DS but never thought I would have a child with it.  I dreamed my life to be a certain way, and when God had other plans it was hard for me to digest.  I went through all kinds of emotions:  scared, mad, excited, worry, happiness, sad....  I was a mess, but thank goodness for Kris--he was a rock!  We found out on a Monday morning and it seemed by Tuesday night, he was finding things to do so he wouldn't have to look at me or talk about "it."  So when him and Madeline got home from the camp that night, I asked him if he still wanted to be with me.  My mind was going in so many directions even though I didn't think he was going to leave me.  I wanted to be reassured.  He promised he wasn't going anywhere and that he already love this baby so very much.  If anything, this shocking news has made our marriage even stronger!  If it wasn't for him, I might have been curled up in a corner, crying.  I was and still am amazed by the love and support from our family and friends.  We certainly wouldn't be where we are today without God and our wonderful family and friends.  Now we went through alot of raw emotions, but in the end we knew that we were still having a baby-- one of THE GREATEST BLESSINGS IN THE WORLD!!  We had heard from someone that we would get tired of making other people feel better so our motto became "it's going to be okay" and we were saying this to other people!  I know some people didn't know what to say and that was fine because we didn't even know what we wanted to be told.  In a few days the notebook came that Dr. Perry sent to us.  It was from the Central Mississippi Down syndrome society and it was amazing!!  It is filled with useful information and testimonies from parents.  It was so nice to know we weren't alone and that other parents had been where we were about to go. Of course, Kris read the entire book before I did and came home telling me all about it!
Seeing him to motiviated and positive got me excited and out of my "funk."  We had and still have an amazing group of professionals who took care of us and who still take care of us.  It is a great feeling to know we have a wonderful team taking care of us.  The kidneys did in fact heal on their own, and we have to give all the glory to God, because if it had not been for those kidneys, we would have never been to Jackson in the first place.  I know it was all in God's plan and that we needed to be prepared, well, as prepared as we could be and that we needed to know. 

I will enter their birth stories at a later date.  I had to start somewhere so what better place than why I decided to do this blog in the first place?!?  Sorry it's so long..I tend to ramble and love to talk haha!  Oh and the blog name "two shades of blue" comes from our girls' birthstones... Madeline's is aquamarine and Chandler's is sapphire and I have to give the credit to my fabulous sissy, Kimberly, for coming up with it!

I hope that by blogging our journey, I will not only be able to keep up with our daughters' lives, but to one day be a resource for other parents who will walk in our shoes...

Until next time,
Megan

And then there were four...

  Chandler Megan Smith

Sassy big sister loves her little sissy!! (for now haha)

Daddy and his girls :) 

 bath time! 

hello world!