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Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):
1) Do you recall what you were doing in 1995? Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc?
2) Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.
1995 was a big year for me. There were not a great many memorable events, but those that happened were pretty big, from my point of view.
January On 1 January 1995, David and I had been married just over 10 years. We had 3 surviving children, two boys and a girl. They were ages 8, 4, and 7 months old. I was approximately 3 months pregnant.
June In late spring, I gave birth to our youngest surviving daughter, Maggie. It was about 4 o'clock in the morning when I felt the contractions. We had been through so many false alarms with all of the pregnancies, I didn't get too alarmed. I just got up and went to the shower. While in the shower, I was hit with THE FEELING, the one that says, "We aren't playing. This kid is coming NOW! ".
I woke David up and let him know what was going on. He called my mama to come to be with the other three children. Although, in reality, it only took maybe half an hour for her to get there, it seemed like she would never get there. Once she did, I had to gear myself up to drive to the hospital.
David was already legally blind and no longer licensed to drive. The car was having problems and stalled every few feet until we got out of the parking lot of the apartment complex. Once we were on the road, things were okay in regards to the car, but I was having contractions, at most, 2 minutes apart. A huge contraction hit as we passed by Sister McIntire's house. I thought that I was going to drive into her house at that point. Thankfully, I didn't. We made it to the hospital.
I had another contraction as I parked the car, as I went into the Emergency Room, at the ER desk, in the elevator, at the nurses' desk on the maternity floor, as we entered the birthing room, as I tried to get into the bed in the birthing room. The nurses waited outside the door because they thought I was praying. The contractions were coming rapid fire. They checked me and I was at 7cm dilation. Then, they asked THE QUESTION: Do you need drugs? Being a wimp this time around after the horrible tearing with the baby before, I said YES! They should not have offered them nor should I have accepted them. The drugs slowed down the whole process and didn't change anything else for me personally. They went straight to the baby.
She was born just over an hour after we got to the hospital and born asleep. This freaked me out. She wasn't crying, but at least she was alive, unlike her previous two sisters. Thankfully, one of those previous two sisters was revived and is sitting in this room with me today. Our Dorian went on to Heaven and is waiting there for us to join her. Anyway, Maggie finally woke up and started crying and all was well with her, so we thought.
The morning after she was born, David was at work. A team of about a zillion doctors came into my room. One of them said, "We have something to tell you about your baby." I was scared to death. I didn't know what was wrong with my baby, what they were going to tell me, or how I was going to deal with it there all alone in a sea of white coats. They told me that her collar bone was broken, that it is a fairly common birthing accident. In reality, it turned out to be a birth defect known as pseudo-arthrosis, not a broken collar bone. Unlike a break, this is not something that would re-set itself. The bones that were supposed to grow towards each other and connect as she formed inside me bypassed each other, thus giving the appearance of a break in the collar bone. This is with her for life and, at this point, causes her a great deal of pain.
July I had all of my wisdom teeth removed soon after I had Maggie. Dr. Shriver, in Anderson, South Carolina, was the oral surgeon that removed them. Although he was an oral surgeon, he was a very nice man and had some great stuff to insure that I had neither pain nor any recollection whatsoever of what he did inside my mouth. Too bad every dentist doesn't use that stuff! He put it into my veins and BOOM! I was out. The next thing I remember was waking up in recovery and Aunt Carolyn taking me home. After the medicine wore off, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't completely painless either.
August In mid-August, I had my 30th birthday. This one was especially funny for me because I could still remember the day that my mama turned 30. I was 8 years old at that point. We were going around town paying the bills, and I remember specifically at the insurance company's office telling them, "Mama is 30 today!" She was not impressed.
At the end of August, we made one of the hardest decisions that I've ever consented to. It went against what I personally believed to be right, but felt we had no other choice. We didn't know where things would go with either Maggie's bone disorder or David's brittle diabetes. The decision was made for me to have a tubal ligation. Dr. Chisolm asked me if I was sure that it was what I wanted to do. I told him it was what I needed to do and that he needed to do it. For a multitude of reasons, it should never have been done. In addition to the emotional cost, it has wreaked havoc on my health in many ways.
November David and I had our 11th wedding anniversary. While I don't remember specifics, I know there were lots of diaper changes involved!
December At the close of 1995, David and I had been married 11 years. We had 4 living children, 2 boys and 2 girls, born in boy-girl-boy-girl order. They were ages 9, 5, 19 months, and 6 months old.
It was a busy life!
Our family, almost 20 years later...
Please visit David over at
Random Thoughts and Observations.
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The Iron Fist: The Immigrant Journey of J. B. Leonis to Riches and Power in Southern California by Richard Nordin 
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