Bethanna Estabrook:  

Many of you know me as the choir girl that sang or hummed a lot; who from tenth to twelfth grade always wore long skirts, never cut her hair or wore make up and appeared impossibly religious. Also, recognized as Robbie Estabrook's girlfriend/fiance senior year. Sadly, a lot of you didn't get to see the outgoing, incredibly friendly person that I was. Robbie and I are no longer together. I also no longer subject myself to ancient traditional female attire and purist rules and standards of the Old English age. Haha. I am a Christian, though. A deeply growing faith in my Father continues to dwell and resound inside of me. I just know it's more than okay to wear pants and make-up and cut my hair. Robbie and I stayed together for 9 years. Now we are separated and awaiting the finalities of our divorce. It's not an easy thing to go through, but it's the best thing we could do for each other and our child. Robbie and I had our first little boy in August of 2005. We named him Oliver Thomas. He is now 4 years old. He's a blond-haired blue-eyed little charmer. Definitely destined to be class clown. He was born with the same genetic condition as Robbie (split-hand and foot syndrome) and has disfigured hands and feet. Although his left hand is completely normal, his right hand has 4 fingers and he had to undergo surgery when he turned a year of age to remove a bone and reconstruct his hand for normal functioning. He has 2 toes on each of his feet and they are split far down the middle. He was also born with a condition called Laryngomalacia. Basically, there is a pocket in his throat. When he was a baby, this pocket would collect milk and he would breath liquid into his lungs. He had a hard time breathing which made him lose calories. We had to increase his amount of formula for calories, then thicken it with a product called Thick-It so it wouldn't pass into his lungs. On top of all of this, he also had gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Basically, suffering from overactive stomach acid. Which doesn't surprise me, considering his lovely prescribed diet and extra help from his throat pocket. Whether due to all of this or not, he fell behind physically for his age percentile. He was prescribed physical therapy twice a week until he was a year and then once a week until age 3. Needless to say, we practically lived in clinics, hospitals and doctors offices up until quite recently. With Robbie in and out of work and me not able to work due to the extra demand on me as a mother, this was extremely difficult on us financially. So that and other various things were putting a huge strain on our relationship. Yet, we still kept up pretenses so-to-speak, thinking it was best. Oliver graduated from physical therapy, and birth-three speech therapy and also graduated from his first year in preschool. He has undergone 2 evaluations at Children's Autism center and was officially diagnosed with Mild Autism. He is behind in his speech, but definitely showing a lot of improvement. He needs to build communication skills and undergo behavioral therapy. But through it all he has proven...Expand for more