Susannah's Story, Part 1

I actually wrote this post using Word at work on Thursday the 26th, the actual birthday. I saved it on my little zip drive thing, which I couldn't get to work from my computer at home. So on Friday, back at work, I e-mailed it to myself so I could try it that way. Then I just didn't find the time to post it until today. It turned out to be so long, that I decided to put it into four different parts. Just to make it easier to go though for those who will read, and for myself later.





Today my little girl turns 8. Can it really be 8 years since she joined our family? Some days it seems so much longer than that, but most days I just can’t believe it has flown by this quickly.

I have been meaning to get both of the girls’ birth stories down, for posterity or something like that. So today, I will be sharing the story of the events leading up to the birth of our little Susannah. Her story needs a lot of leading in time and a bit of follow-up time.

To begin, our family has a very interesting story. Martin and I met on the internet and got married after being in the physical presence of each other for about a week and a half.



Before the actual ceremony we had been talking on the internet and phone for close to a year, but the actual time spent together was 1 week in Texas and then three or four days before the wedding.

Sydney was born in Landstuhl, Germany. The circumstances of her birth are pretty interesting too, but we will save that for another day.

Susannah was due to join our family on September 8th of 2000. If she had been born on that date, she would have been born in Colorado Springs and might have had a very normal and boring story to join our family with. She just couldn’t have that. She needed an interesting story too, so in the process, I think she got the best one so far.

During the first part of my pregnancy we were still living in Germany. The joke among many of the American’s living in Germany is that after your three years there, you go home to the States with one of three things. Those options include a shrunk, a grandfather clock, or a kid. Many “lucky” people get suckered into both a shrunk and a grandfather clock, and sometimes they might leave with all three. Ours turned out to be another kid, though she wouldn’t have the opportunity to be born there.


During the pregnancy, whenever I would visit the doctor, I would ask each and every time if I was going to be okay to fly home the end of June. That is when I our three years would be over. I was told time and time again that I would be okay to fly. So, we made our plans, the government bought our tickets, and we flew back to the States when I was 28 weeks pregnant. We decided that our PCS leave should be spent in Georgia visiting Martin’s friends and family.