I met Seth at a giant party in a park in Grand Forks, ND. At the time, I was in the Air Force and he was in college. We dated for two months before I deployed to the Middle East. It was my eighth deployment and I wanted it to be my last. I was so crazy about Seth and I felt like maybe he was "the one". While I was deployed, it became very clear to me that I was ready to grow up and settle down. I mean I was the ripe old age of 23 at that point so I clearly new exactly what I wanted in life, right? Well I thought I did so that's exactly what happened. The second I returned home, we started trying to get pregnant. Three weeks later, I had a positive EPT. Wow, that was easy! We got married in Las Vegas when I was 4 months along. I was due at the end of June and would be separating from the Air Force in July. We planned to move back to my hometown Mississippi. I wanted a natural birth and planned everything out with my three page birth plan. I was quite accustomed to everything going my way. Not that I was spoiled by my parents but simply because I had always worked hard to make sure things went the way I wanted. I couldn't imagine having a baby would be any different. Reality gave me a big slap in the face at 2:09 am on June 27. My daughter Aubrey was born and her condition was spiraling out of control. She aspirated her meconium, her right lung popped, she needed to be on a ventilator, her blood pressure was unstable. The list went on and on. What the fuck just happened?!?!! This was not part of the plan! She was in the NICU for 3 days before I got to hold her. Three days with out being able to to hold your newborn baby is basically an eternity. She remained in the NICU for 14 days before we brought her home. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay in the hospital with her the entire two weeks. Bringing her home was so intimidating. By that time, all of our family had returned home and there I was, alone with a new born baby. I had no idea what to do. Seth was working all of the time and just finishing school. I felt like the most unprepared person in the world. When Aubrey was 6 weeks old, we moved to Mississippi. I thought it was important to be close to my family. During the next few months, she was in and out of the hospital. I felt like my life was a giant revolving door of hospital beds, exhaustion, drama with my family, and never having enough money. It was during those months that we learned Aubrey had a chromosome deletion, 16p11.2. The geneticist didn't give us much information and I was just too concerned with her other health issues to worry about it. Aubrey had to have a tracheotomy and that was definitely the most pressing issue. She came home from the hospital with a trach. She was so resilient but in my heart I knew there was something bigger brewing. I knew the lack of resources in Mississippi was going to be a problem and my family didn't turn out to be as helpful as I had hoped. I received a job offer from a company in Las Vegas and I didn't think about it for more than 30 seconds before I accepted it. We had been in Mississippi for 9 months and I knew it was not the place for us. Seth was working for FedEx at the time and it was easy enough for him to transfer locations. Moving to Las Vegas was almost too easy. We were able to find a house and a nanny within two days. Aubrey had a trach but everything seemed to be going really well with her. I had adapted to carrying all of the supplies around and it was becoming a normal part of life. My younger brother had moved with us and he was a tremendous help with Aubrey. Seth was on anything but a normal schedule and I was working 10 hour days. At the time, not working didn't even seem like an option to me. I was still in the mindset that as long as I was home every night, that was enough. It never occurred to me that Aubrey needed me more than I needed work. I kept telling myself that once she had the trach removed, nothing would be different about her. When she was 2, I made an appointment with a geneticist in L.A. I will never forget the car ride home from that appointment. The doctor told me everything that I didn't want to hear. It was the first time that I really got a grasp of how Aubrey's life would be. I cried and cried and cried. It was the first time I had even considered that she may never talk or that she was autistic. I didn't even know what autism was, honestly. I still thought that I should continue working and that someone else should care for her during the day. I was completely comfortable with someone else making the choices about her daily life for me. That all changed when she entered the Las Vegas school system when she turned 3. That's when I finally got it. It was like the light bulb finally turned on for me. This is my child. Her life is in my hands. I need to be most knowledgeable person about her, not someone else. I finally understood in a very deep way that my life was no longer about me, it was about Aubrey. Everything seemed so clear after I came to that understanding. I was no longer going to focus on myself and my career, I was going to focus on being a mother. I could not get her out of Las Vegas fast enough. I wanted her as far away as possible from that broken school district. The night I realized where she belonged was one of the happiest nights of my life. We were visiting Seth's family in North Dakota. We went to the local high school football game and Aubrey was so happy and had such a sense of freedom there. It was in that very moment that I knew she should be raised in North Dakota. Although Seth's family lived here, making plans to move was no easy task. We both had to find jobs and a place to live. He ended up with a great job in a gas plant and I took a job as a paralegal. We moved into his grandmother's farm house and revamped the entire thing. Aubrey started school at Divide County Elementary when she was 4 years old and it is the most amazing place for her. She has a paraprofessional with her all day and now uses an app on on iPad to communicate. I am able to freely go in and out of the school to see how her day is going or to talk with anyone on her team of specialists. I take her to school and am finished with work when she is out of school. I took the summer off from work to stay home with her which has been amazing. Of course we have challenging days. Days of constant hitting or biting out of frustration. Days that seem like her bedtime cannot come soon enough. The difference is that I am able to be her constant now. I am her greatest cheerleader. Looking back it's so unbelievable that there was a time that I left my child's fate in anyone else's hands. I am so grateful that I woke up and realized that my love for her is what she needs the most.
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