his birth...and even then it would be erratic.  Kyle was born with brain damage due to lack of oxygen and a brain injury caused when he was slammed into my pelvic bone.  I couldn't stop bleeding either because my uterus wouldn't clamp down, so the doctor had to inject several different medicines to get my uterus to respond and clamp.

The doctor made snide remarks like, "If you had had your first baby natural, this wouldn't be happening."  and another one, which made me decide to press a lawsuit without even knowing what one was, "If you ever get pregnant in the state of Indiana, I'd rather not sit with you."  Of course he always made comments like these when no one was around to hear them but him and me...so it was all hearsay.  After the last comment, I said, "Oh, my God...I think you just fucked up (pardon my language)...but that's how I felt."  Of course I said this to myself because I didn't want this doctor to have anything he could use against me if we did go into a court procedure. 

Kyle would stay at Community Hospital for 24 hours before they transferred  him to Riley Children's Hospital.  My sister-in-law, who was on maternity leave at the time, worked as a neo-natal nurse at this hospital and I had asked if she wouldn't mind coming to check my baby out.  She did, and with my mother there, she told her that she didn't think Kyle would live 24 hours in the condition he was in.  (She never spoke this to Matt and me, until 6 months after Kyle's death).  That's why the hospital where I had him kept him there, because they were hoping Kyle would die and not have to transfer him.  Well...Kyle survived and he went on to the children's hospital.  When I was finally able to go there myself which I had to find all the strength I could muster to walk again (I couldn't walk, but I had to get out of that hospital..so Matt came and carried me from the wheel chair to the car), they had a wheel chair ready for me when I arrived.  Matt had to carry me yet again from the door to another wheel chair so I could go see my big, bautiful baby boy.  He had regained his color but he was sooo swollen all over that you couldn't find his eyes.  Kyle weighed 8 lbs and 8 1/2 ounces and was 22 1/2 inches long with a head circumference of 15 1/2 inches (normal head sizes range from 12 - 13 inches).  I never once said, "Why me God?" Because I knew with the strong faith I had that it wasn't God's fault this happened.  It was human error.

Kyle had been in the hospital all but 17 days of the 4 months he survived (I say survived, because he never really did live).  On top of the brain damage, he had gone through two bouts of meningitis and one bout of pneumonia before dying at home where he felt the most comfortable.  He died two days after the last hospital stay when the doctors said it was better he be at home than there and that there was nothing more they could do.  Riley hospital gave us a letter stating that if Kyle were to die at home, that it wouldn't be due to any defective organs, but that with his extensive brain damage his brain would start shrinking and stop growing and his heart would give out.  Months before he passed away, you could see the skull platelets through his skin.  He never sucked or swallowed, he never completely regulated his temperature, he had to be fed through a feeding tube....but he never had to stay on a respirator or oxygen tank.  His fight to live was sooo intense that it gave me a pronound feeling of survival myself. If he could survive all this, I, too, could survive anything.  

We didn't follow through with a lawsuit until December 5, 1989 because at that time my sister was also going to this doctor and I wanted to wait until her baby was ok...which it was, but again, the doctor did not deliver it because he was at home.  She delivered it without him and a nurse was there to catch it...geesh.  Well...we went through 6 years of ups and downs with the lawsuit before it came to settlement time.  Meanwhile, 6 months after Kyle died, we decided to try once more.  After 2 years of trying and three male doctors telling us we couldn't have anymore, without doing any testing mind you, we decided to seek a woman ob/gyn.  She did 5 months of tests and when nothing seemed to work on our own, she asked us if we wanted to go on fertility drugs.  We both responded with a "NO", we only want one more baby, not 6.  So we went home and just came to the conclusion that we weren't going to have another child, but three weeks after that visit, Leslie came to me to give me her usual mornin hug and I practically through her across the room (well, not really, but I felt as if I could easily do that), because my breasts hurt so bad.  Three weeks prior to that, we'd told her that she was going to be an only child after all and her response was, "I know Mommy.  I gave up on you and Daddy a long time ago."  hehehe.
This little girl, so grown up by 6 and what she went through along with us I feel that no child should be put through, but she would be and always will be the source of light that keeps me going even today, plus my strong faith in God."  Well...Leslie and I went to the drugstore and bought yet another pregnancy test (the 20th one) because I had a feeling we may very well have succeeded  in creating another baby; I just wanted it confirmed.  Well...we were and it was the easiest pregnancy and easiest delivery I ever experienced all because of one woman doctor's help and our faith in God.  Our third child, a son, Neil, was born May 24, 1993, a day before the Dilly sextuplets (right down the road from the hospital we were at)..hehehe.  I'm glad they got to have their special 6-baby day than me..hehehe.  Neil looks just like Kyle from the curl of his ears to the bottom of his toes...just in a smaller form.  He weighed in at 6lbs 6 oz. and 19 1/2 in. long with a head circumferance of 14 1/2".

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Graphic set on this page was made by Kyle's Mommy and should not be taken without permission as it was made just for the Memory of Kyle!