This is some background to Mary Claire’s Small Miracles story. Claire did a good job of expressing how scary all this was.

When a baby is born, their stomach looks large because of their liver. At birth, the liver has to suddenly take on the duty of filtering the blood of a rapidly growing body, and sometimes it gets behind. This can lead to a jaundice condition as impurities (dead blood cells called biliruben) accumulate in the blood. The skin can take on the yellow tint of these impurities.

Putting the baby under ultraviolet lights can help break down these impurities and reverse the jaundice. This is what happened to Danny at birth. His condition was severe enough that the doctors were afraid he would have to have a blood transfusion. After a few days in the hospital, the lights worked, and the jaundice reversed.

Even more serious, though, was a kidney infection that developed at the same time. An immature valve allows urine to back up from his bladder to his kidney, leading to infection and a high fever. The infection was high enough that he was in danger of having it spread to his spinal cord. The doctors had to perform spinal taps to draw spinal fluid and make sure it was not infected. He also had to have antibiotics administered intravenously.

All of this was a nightmare for Kathy and me, although the Irish nurse encouraged us saying how lucky we were to have all of these treatments available in America. Ten babies in Ireland have to share one set of biliruben lights, and Danny had his own.

Danny recovered, but had to be on antibiotics for two years as a precaution against further kidney infection. At his two year check up, the doctors found his valves working fine and he was cured.

Mary Claire had low blood sugar levels at birth, but they quickly became normal. I did not realize she equated this condition with Danny’s. Now I know why she tries to eat so much sugar.

All of our babies were small miracles.

Two clowns walked into the room, just in from the “Spring Fling” festival at school. We then went to a Brookwood baseball game at Parkview where these two were highly admired by several little girls at the park.

(Click to zoom.)

(Found this in an early blog system I was testing… 3/10/2003)

Riding home from the Girl Scout father / daughter dance where Kelly, Mary Claire, and I all danced to oldies dressed in Hawaiian outfits, Mary Claire asked… “Dad, when you were born, did girls wear Poodle skirts.” Kelly jumped in, “That was in the 50’s.” I added, “And I was born in the sixties.”

Thinking about that, she then asked, “When you were born, were you free?” I asked her, “What do you mean by that?” She said, “You know how Martin Luther King helped make people free.”

I was surprised by her question. “Mary Claire, when I was little, I wasn’t black.” Kelly started laughing. I went on to explain how when I was born, there was segregation, but that I was little when Martin Luther King helped get rid of separate seating on buses and in restaurants, so I didn’t really remember things being segregated.

“She thought about that…. “Well did you have big hair?” I asked, “Do you mean an afro?” She said, “Yes.”

I had to explain to her again, that I wasn’t black when I was little. Kelly kept cracking up.

We had our annual blizzard last Thursday. All schools shut down. I needed to go to work because it was our first full day with a new client, and I needed to monitor the Costco Check Printing website. (The next best thing to free checks!)

I grabbed a couple of photos of the girls and Clyde playing in the backyard. Kelly used one photo on her posting here. Unfortuantely the camera decided to focus on the screen in the foreground and not the kids and dog in the background. They had a fun day anyway.