Pete is our oldest daughter. She turns ten years old today! We had been trying to have another baby for at least a year when the wife got pregnant with her. We had even tried different fertilization stuff and nothing seemed to work. When we finally gave up along came Pete. A very pleasant surprise.

Everything about her birth was amazing. We had gone in to Carrollton to have an ultrasound done and they found myconion (?) fluid around her and some other weird shit, so they scheduled us for another internal ultrasound at Northside Hospital in Atlanta. The baby was supposed to be born in Carrollton with the help of midwives as it seemed like the more comfortable thing to do at the time. Things didn't quite work out that way.

When we got to Northside after the doctor had done his exam he started talking to us about inducing labor. By then it was too late as her water had broken and Pete was coming like it or not. She was born at 12:08 AM on October 24th, 1997. When she was born it was obvious that something was wrong. They weren't even sure if she was going to live through the night.

Somewhere around here I have a ton of pictures of her hooked up to monitors and all kinds of machines and whatnot. Long story short, she was transported across the street to Scottish Rite Children's Hospital where she underwent a surgery that removed several centimeters of her small intestine that had never properly opened up, and moved her appendix over to the other side. She spent a month and a half in the ICU at Scottish Rite before she came home on feeding pumps and other stuff that would make sure she was breathing and whatnot. The wife basically lived at the hospital for six weeks. It was a pretty rough time for all of us.

She did come home though, and has grown to be a beautiful and healthy girl.

I hope you have a most wonderful 10th birthday. 10-years-old is a milestone. I can still remember mine. It is one of the ones that I will always remember. I love you speatpea.