It's 3:20 in the afternoon. Today is a beautiful day in Arlington Texas and our third day of vacation. I am not enjoying the weather or the time off, but rather find myself in another reality wishing to wake up.

I come back into focus, noting the white tile floor below me and the strange unmistakable smell of a hospital filling my airways. I am staring blankly at a doctor listening to him speak through a mask as he informs me that my son will be born in the next few minutes. I had been looking forward to the sound of those words, but they were not supposed to be uttered for another three months.

This can't be, I think to myself. My wife and I are both healthy and young with no history of problems in either of our families. Not only that, but this pregnancy was special and meant to be. Eight months earlier our family planning specialist informed us that Jody might not be fertile and if she was it would be difficult to get pregnant. My wife was apparently not showing the chemical surges associated with ovulation that are necessary for impregnation. That is why when, three months later, we found ourselves oddly in possession of a donated station wagon, starting the lease on a two bedroom apartment, and my wife holding a positive pregnancy strip we not only considered this child a miracle but also a part of some larger plan as every thing was lining up for his arrival.

The man in scrubs touches my shoulder gingerly as I tentatively respond by asking what my son's odds of survival are at this early stage of pregnancy. The doctor reluctantly replies that my son will have less than a 40% chance for survival. I am speechless, unwilling to allow myself to process what is happening before me. How is this happening to us?

Just yesterday my wife and I had driven out of the largest flood in Houston to arrive at my parent's house in Arlington. My wife was concerned about the lack of movement from our son this morning, which didn't truthfully concern anyone but her. By noon she insisted on going to a doctor for a check up. When we arrived and the doctor quickly found the heartbeat of our child we both assumed he was fine and that we would be going home shortly.

As we were getting our things packed to go the doctor came in a told us we had 30 minutes to get our son out of my wife or he would die. Our son was apparently not getting any flow from the placenta and essentially fighting for his life. Not only was he fighting now, but he had been fighting for some length of time causing his growth to be small for this stage of the pregnancy. We would have no time to discuss who his doctor will be, what hospital he will be born at, what environment he will have during the birth, what type of birth he will have, or who would be present in the delivery room.

At that moment I truly became a Dad. I knew so immediately because the emotion and pain was so instantly overwhelming and impossible to process. I had not met this child, this person, yet I already loved him more that anything in life. This was fatherhood and my life would now be changed forever.

It is now 3:23 and my son has just come into the world. The doctor allows me to see him for a second as they cart him off for examination and preparation of the life support he will need to continue living. His weight comes in at 490 grams, 1 pound 1 ounce, the equivalent of four sticks of butter, and he is too small. He is 10 grams under the weight standard they consider for long term survival. It would be up to the specialist on call that day to decide the fate of my son with whether he should go to a specialty hospital where he may die during the transport or be left at his current facility to live a very short but peaceful life. At sometime during this examination and decision process our newborn son twitched his nose in frustration of the nurse applying tape to his face. That nurse knew at that moment they had to give this child a chance, and with that I was off in a car following his ambulance through a 45 mile rush hour drive to Cooks Children's Hospital.

During this transport from one hospital to another our son nearly left us several times. What I didn't know was this was just the beginning of the longest roller coaster, of ups down and more downs, than I would ever experience again in my lifetime.

We named our son Nolan Christopher Farris. Nolan after Nolan Ryan an Arlington baseball hero, and Christopher after the Saint who protects those who go through long difficult journeys. Little did we realize how long and difficult a journey this would be.

Nolan and I would be fighting together those first few nights while his mother stayed at a hospital on the other side of town. Upon the doctors recommendation we had our son immediately baptized in his hospital bed with just my parents there to witness it.

On the third day Jody was allowed to leave the hospital and come see her son for the first time. We were only allowed to look at him and no one was allowed to touch or hold him, as he was far too fragile. Nolan was no bigger than the size of my hand. He was so small that the beanie baby in his bed was actually longer and thicker than him. He was visibly thin and his color was blood red due to the transparency of his delicate skin. His eyes were still sealed shut he had no cartilage so his nose and ears were truly not formed. He was incredibly small, but he was a child in every form and feature from his head to his toes. It was amazing to behold him. Months later my wife and I would look at pictures of him and realize how truly sick he appeared.

What we visually saw and perceived of our son at that moment and what was captured on film were and still are two different children to us. Even today when we look at the images and videos of Nolan we don't remember him looking so frail.

So fragile was our son that we were not to talk to him or disturb him with any noises. Nolan's odds of long term survival were as slim as they get. Less than 40% of newborns his weight survive the first few days. Statistics show that the majority of newborns that survive as premature as Nolan are girls. Nolan would also be placed at the highest risk for brain hemorrhaging due to the frailty of his body. A simple bump on his head could cause serious bleeding which happens to some degree in 3 out of 5 cases. Nolan's lungs and body were not ready for the real world which would cause a number of surgeries and issues that would threaten his life.

One such complication began on the fourth day when our son's kidneys stopped functioning. Lack of kidney functions means that all of the toxins in our son's body would no longer be able to get out. They would build and swell our son until his body could no longer function. This made our son's critical situation so severe that within two weeks of the doctors trying everything they could, we would be forced to discuss letting our son pass away.

We had seen Nolan beat so many odds and prove so many statistics wrong that such a topic was unbearable. I remember the conversations to the exact detail. When I think back on those days, the memory comes back to me the same way a bad car accident plays from memory in your head. Every single detail is there and the recollection of it in your head plays back in slow motion.

I was starring at a fish bowl in a very small office with my wife sitting next to me. We were in the office of the hospital priest visiting with him, unannounced, with the intent to discuss to possibility of letting our son go; what that would mean for us as parents; and what that would mean for Nolan and his quality of life. The father described how they clear the intensive care unit of people and then bring in a recliner for one of us to sit in. They then remove all life support and let us hold him until he takes his final breath. He explained it all so fluidly and peacefully, but seemed hesitant that we should consider such a step with our child. He was the father that baptized our son and visited him with prayers at least twice a day. The father ever so mildly gave us strength that our son had a purpose and asked us to let go and let god take over.

The following day the doctors formally asked us to make a decision about our son. They asked us to authorize a surgery that he needed in order to keep his heart functioning properly, or avoid the surgery and take our son off life support. Normally this answer would clearly be surgery, but in this case the doctors felt certain Nolan would not make it through recovery due to his non-functioning kidneys.

We went to the chapel and kneeled on the front steps. I was angry and sad for being in this situation. I wanted so bad to see my son grow up, and I could do nothing to help him survive this. We utterly broke down in that chapel and completely turned it over to God. We decided that Nolan could not live without the surgery and the only option for us was to proceed on with that surgery, knowing that only another miracle could save our boy.

We got that next miracle. Nolan came out of his surgery peeing. Nobody understands how or why, but his kidneys were working again and going full strength. Nolan leaped hurdle after hurdle breaking one statistic after another, and created miracle after miracle from that day forward.

Nolan was heading in the right direction, but now Jody and I had our own miracles that needing answering. We lived and worked in Denver, yet our son was going to be in a Dallas hospital for months. Jody was on summer leave from her job as a school counselor, but I would have to begin commuting every week. Jody would now start living with my parents in Dallas carpooling to the hospital daily to watch over Nolan. These combined with a son in intensive care would be nothing short of amazing to survive from. Nolan was born on June 12th and Jody was due back to work by the third week in August. Jody's current employer, shortly after hearing about our son, terminated her on August 1st. It was an incredibly difficult thing to comprehend. My wife had worked with this company for over 4 years. As bad as it seemed, we quickly realized that this was a clear direction for Jody to be 100% there for Nolan. We decided that Jody would not work for the next several years, freeing her up to focus on our son.

It is now two months since his birth and Nolan is being rushed to another hospital to receive surgery on his eyes. Unfortunately doctors were late diagnosing our son with a disease called ROP. It only occurs in premature infants and can cause the retina to detach from the eye if it is not caught in time. Nolan would wind up going through several surgeries to try and prevent and minimize this, but in the end he would wind up blind in one eye and legally blind in the other.

Another three months, 8 surgeries, two hospitals, and 1,100 miles between father and son were taxing us to a breaking point. We needed to be together so Jody and I began to push for a transfer to a hospital in Denver. Something that initially sounded so simple became so incredibly difficult.

Nolan was still in intensive care and a flight would require a staff of at least five on the plane to minimize any risks. This would also mean starting from scratch for the third time on Nolan's doctors and nurses. The poor experience we had at the second hospital came into play constantly when trying to decide if and when we should bring Nolan to Colorado. Moving Nolan would also cause problems medically as the air, that Nolan was already struggling to breath through is damaged lungs, would be less oxygen rich at Denver's high altitude.

We eventually made the decision to go with the transfer. We wanted and needed to be together as a family. By Thanksgiving we were once again united as a family and my wife was sleeping in her own bed after over 5 months of sleeping in my parent's guest bedroom.

Nolan began to gain weight and develop a true personality of his own. Jody and I actually got accustomed to living in a hospital. Washing our hands non stop all day, listening to the television through a box beside the bed, having nurses tell us what we can and can't do with our son, knowing that every day something might change for the better or worse with our son but that in the end Nolan will defy everyone and keep charging forward.

Seven months later it is June 12th and my son is celebrating his 1st birthday. My wife and I have little hats on and have required all the nurses in the unit to also wear the same ridiculously small hats. We have brought a cake that feeds 100 and decorated his room to the hilt with birthday theme decorations. We are excited to make it to this day and trying to show gratitude for those who helped us get Nolan there. My parents are at our first hospital in Dallas cutting a cake for the staff there as we simultaneously cut our cake here. It is a bittersweet day as we treasure his health, but are overly ready to have him home and out of a hospital.

By his birthday Nolan was using a ventilator to assist his breathing that does so through an opening surgeons made in his trachea. This added equipment has made it difficult to get Nolan home and out of the hospital. Health wise Nolan has been cleared by the doctors to go home, but on one condition: 24-7 home nursing care. The doctors gave us that news over four months ago. Knowing that we could go home, and not being able to, made this period of time intense for everyone. Nursing is in a shortage crisis and we find ourselves yet again in need of another rabbit out of the hat.

Five days later that rabbit appeared. A company that my wife contacted agreed to take on our son. That agreement came solely through the heart of one nurse who committed to cover 6 nights a week, which is exactly the times we needed to get final clearance.

One year and 5 days after his birth, Nolan got to sleep in his home for the first time. It was truly the most amazing evening. Nobody slept much, but everyone was at peace knowing that the next hurdle had just been jumped.

As I write this down and begin to close this painfully yet healing story I look up and see my 2-year-old son spinning in circles on the floor banging loudly on his toys. He smiles and belly laughs as I say something to him. He then goes back to licking the lights on his rocket playing like any other child would. He is over 34 inches tall and weights 25 pounds. He is breathing on his own and beginning to eat regular baby food. My wife is in the next room preparing and organizing a trip to the zoo for disabled children. She is now a board member for our local disability resource center. I look around and still wonder how it is possible for so much good to come from something that is so difficult and so scary to handle? I wound up getting a great job within my company that allows me to adequately support my family. Jody received compensation from the government for the loss of her job. We managed to go from nothing in savings to affording a home and a family car. Our marriage survived a traumatic situation that sees 9 in 10 divorced. Our life is better now than it ever has been and oddly, as odds would have it, none of it was planned.

Planned. Maybe that is the point. Not every thing can be planned and not everything can fit into a statistic. We learned to let go and have faith. Once we did we found a whole new world and an elevated plane of happiness. That was Nolan's gift to us. He exists even though everything says he shouldn't. We now live every day that much fuller knowing each day is a precious gift that can be as wonderful as you are willing to let it be.

To my son for restoring my faith, Your Dad