18 Months

The first eighteen months of our son's life were a series of big moments and big decisions. We brought home our son without an apnea monitor or any of the other equipment we had detested in the hospital but now wished we had at home. Having been there in person many a night when the nurses literally had to shake my son to get him to wake up and start breathing again, those first few nights home should have been nearly sleepless. Instead I can remember my wife and I being so exhausted that we passed out each night in spite of our fears, our son's bassinet right next to our bed. I'm a little ashamed to admit that but having a premmie can remind you like few things on this earth that you are very, very human.

Like an angel from God my mother-in-law still hovered, each night. She's gone now. She passed away when Anthony was five. But as a grandmother she was unparalleled. She saw her own daughter weak and in pain, barely home alive in many ways, and she saw the same in her new grandson. As for me, to be honest, I think the expiration date on "useful" in her book hit right around the time we brought Anthony home. I was a man. Not a bad word but not really the first word that comes to a woman's mind when a newborn arrives on the scene. For me the danger had passed. My wife and child were home. It was time to get back to the "providing" part of my job description and so I did.

Anthony grew, slowly at first, but then more each week. Though he would always be on the small end of the growth scale in those early years he at least attained and maintained a healthy weight. His eye refused to stop turning in and he was slow to reach his developmental milestones and deep down we knew what this could all mean but we were too shell shocked those first eighteen months to find the energy to speculate. Some of the brightest medical minds around us were only willing to hazard guesses so who were we to try and predict the future. Still...the words lingered there, just outside the touch of our conscious minds: autism, mental retardation, brain damaged. When Anthony began to smile and interact with us in the smallest ways we would break out in celebrations worthy of a celebrity. His first word was "light", which was the thing that most fascinated him during bottle feedings (the light on the ceiling fan overhead). Then came "ball" (that thing Daddy kept bouncing across the floor to him), followed by his first real communication of what he was feeling from his physical environment "windeeeeeee" (it was, after all, a windy day). He was late sitting up. Very late crawling. But his mind? His mind seemed fine. I still have on videotape the very first time he said his full name: Antnee FeAgioli. The tape stops with me cheering in the background but I didn't dare turn the camera on myself; I was crying tears of pure joy.

He had eye surgery, which was gut wrenching, but he (and we) got through it. After that challenge I realized it was time to take him home to Pittsburgh. He was the family namesake. Anthony the IV. My family had waited long enough, with bated breath, each week for updates. My Aunts and Uncles, my cousins...it was time they meet our little fighter. So home we went.