In honor of Josh’s 10th birthday (which was actually yesterday but the internet was out all day yesterday!), here is his birth story: Josh was born in 2005 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Prior to his birth, I swore I would never have a baby in Uzbekistan, although after much prayer and consideration, we decided that’s exactly what we should do. Josh was born at an international clinic that was run by an American doctor, Dr. Jan.

I’ll skip over all the labor parts (you’re welcome!) and get to the good stuff. Immediately after Josh was born, Dr. Jan grabbed him, cut the cord, and ran off into another room with him. Aaron and I looked at each other, thinking “Hmmm…wonder what’s going on?” A few minutes later she came back to us, and said, “I have to ask you a difficult question. If I lose him, do you want me to try to bring him back, or do you want to just let him go?” Of course, we assured her that we wanted her to do everything possible for him. His first two Apgar scores were 2 and then 4.

After about 20 minutes, Dr. Jan came to see us and told us that we needed to take Josh home. I was thinking, “HOME?? I can’t take a sick baby home!” but what she meant was home – to America. He had several issues which she was concerned about: his entire head was covered in a purplish bruise, she thought he had a cleft palate, the tips of his ears were parallel with his nose (and not his eyes, as they should be), and he had repeated apneic episodes (where he suddenly stopped breathing and had to be revived). Between the breathing issues and the cleft palate/ear position (which she felt were possible signs of some sort of birth defect), she recommended immediate evacuation to a more medically-advanced country.

We immediately called our insurance company. Josh was born at 9 PM, and Dr. Jan wanted us on a 9 AM flight to India (with Abigail, who was 23 months old at the ᴛι̇ɱe). In the middle of the night, we made an emergency call to the US Embassy, and the consular officer himself came to the clinic with all the necessary paperwork for us to fill out to get Josh a passport and birth certificate. He returned a few hours later (still in the middle of the night!) with BOTH a birth certificate and a passport for Josh. He also let us use his satellite phone to call our parents and tell them what was going on. For some reason, India didn’t work out. Over the next 24 hours (during which Josh continue to have apneic episodes and had to be under 24-hour surveillance), various other options came from the insurance company, including Gerɱaпy and Finland. By the morning of day 3, we got another call from the insurance company. Guess what? Turns out we didn’t have insurance for Josh after all. I had insurance (and I had mistakenly assumed that because Josh was part of me that HE would also be covered), but the baby wasn’t covered. Major bummer. So…no insurance for Josh. When Dr. Jan found out, she recommended that we just go to America, where we could be surrounded by family and friends to support us. She said we’d have to pay medical bills for the rest of our lives, but oh, well. So we decided to go to America. Two problems: we had to be accompanied by a doctor, the WHOLE WAY because Josh was still not stable. And the second problem: there was no commercial airline in the WORLD that would let us on an international flight with a four-day-old baby with breathing problems. Dr. Jan’s advice? Just don’t tell anyone.

So…we got ready to go to the airport. We were to be accompanied by Dr. Ellen, another American doctor from the clinic. Josh was flat on a board (because he breathed best in that position), all hooked up to various monitors. Dr. Ellen covered him – and the monitors! – with a baby blanket. Nobody in Tashkent looked twice, and we boarded the flight to Gerɱaпy. Once we had taken off, she removed the blanket – much to the surprise of the flight attendants! – and carefully monitored him. He had an episode, and she had to request an oxygen bottle from the stewardess. We landed in Gerɱaпy and had to make the difficult decision of deciding whether to continue on to the US or stay in Gerɱaпy. The flight from Gerɱaпy to the US was longer than the flight from Tashkent to Gerɱaпy, and Dr. Ellen was concerned that Josh would struggle even more on the next flight. I don’t even remember how we decided, but we made the decision to continue on to the US. Again, we covered him – and his monitors – up with a baby blanket and boarded the plane. We made it without incident to Washington, D.C. where we had a short connection to Pittsburgh. At this point, we had been traveling for 24 hours and Dr. Ellen had been awake and observing Josh the entire ᴛι̇ɱe. My parents met us at the Pittsburgh airport and took us directly to the emergency room at the children’s hospital in Pittsburgh, where they were expecting us. Another cool part of the story: back on day 3 when we decided to go to the States, I called my mom from Ta