Preemies challenge parents and grandparents
Published: 6/27/2012 3:51 PM
Last Modified: 6/27/2012 3:51 PM
You know you’re one of the old guys in the newsroom when they ask you to blog about grandparenting.
But I said yes, first because I love being a grandfather, called Papa in my family, and because I am, in fact, an old guy, at least to the bevy of young reporters running around the newsroom for whom the Vietnam War is ancient history.
And I’m well qualified. My 12th grandhchild was born Monday. (More on than later).
My introduction to grandparenting came 20 years ago when I felt way too young to be called grandpa. My oldest daughter gave birth to twin boys. They were 10 weeks early, weighed about three pounds each, and spent their first seven weeks in neonatal intensive care in a Kansas City hospital.
When they finally graduated to life at home, they came attached to all manner of hospital equipment, including a monitor that shrieked whenever they stopped breathing and their blood oxygen level got too low.
They required around the clock care.
The first several months were exhausting times for my daughter and her husband, pastor of a small church near Lawrence, Kansas.
My wife and I spent as much time as we could afford traveling to Kansas to help them grab a few hours of desperately needed sleep. And we often brought one of the boys to Tulsa to give them some relief.
It was a tense, challenging time for all of us, a time of minute by minute concern for their well-being, and a gnawing long-term concern about whether they would overcome their traumatic beginnings to grow to normal adulthood.
But it also was a time of joy, lying on my back on a couch, a tiny child asleep on my chest, contemplating the miracle and fragility of life. And it was a time when bonds of love were forged that the years have not weakened.
By the grace of God, our twins grew up to be smart, athletic, wonderful young men. (Yes, I’m being objective.)
Eighteen years after their birth, my wife and I sat in the stands of a football field in Lawrence, Kansas, and watched them score touchdowns as their 8-man football team won their school’s first-ever Kansas Christian School state championship.
I looked at my wife. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” I said, our hearts swelled with that special brand of grandparent-pride.
Written by
Bill Sherman
Staff Writer
2 comments displayed
