Happy Birthday Mary

Today is my daughter, Mary's 25th birthday. Happy Birthday sweetie! I miss you!

Mary lives out east and is a professional trumpet player for a major orchestra. She is a tall, beautiful, skinny blonde and has brains to go with (she recently graduated from Yale University with a Masters in Music).

It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since her birth. She was born almost two months premature via emergency c-section after I went into early labor and drugs wouldn't stop it. She was 4 lbs. 6 oz. at birth and lost down to 3 lbs. 15 oz. (I was also a preemie and was 3 lbs. 11 oz. at birth!). She was born with a hole in her heart and her lungs were not developed enough to breathe on her own. It was touch and go the first few days, but she was a fighter. She wasn't going to give up.

She was put on a ventilator and given blood transfusions regularily to replace the blood that had to be drawn hourly to check her oxygen levels. She had to be fed via a feeding tube that was run through her nose and down her throat. I recovered from the c-section and was discharged and had to leave my baby behind. I couldn't get up to visit her more than once a day, and she was a very slow eater and needed tlc to develop strength to suck on the nipple of her doll-sized bottles. For the nurses it was easier to use the gavage tube to feed her, but if we left it up to the nurses, she would have been in the hospital for months. My husband decided to take charge. He went up to the hospital at every feeding time and made her drink from her bottle no matter how much she would rather sleep! And she was home in about three weeks after I got home, thanks to her daddy.

Mary was a fighter then, and is still a fighter now. I always joke that she wants what she wants no matter what, and will fight to get it. That's how one has to be in the field she is in. Musicians must be aggressive to get even mediocre jobs. It's a brutally competitive career field no matter what kind of musician one is. Mary has also had many problems, struggles, disappointments and challenges and she has fought her way through it all even though she is so far away from home...and on her own. She is a survivor. We love her and are very proud of her.