When can we have kids?..... It's a question men have been hearing through out history, as I heard a few times in 1995. After putting the subject aside for a while with. when I'm good & ready! I decided I was as ready as I'd ever be. So with that & none of the in between bits, my wife was pregnant. The pregnancy was pretty normal, & we did all the usual stuff, nesting, & going to anti - natal classes, which I'm sure are designed to humiliate men, but however 8 weeks before due date Bodee tried coming out. We sent him back to his room until 9 days from due date, when he arrived by cesarean section, & that's the day our interesting lives began when the doctors said Treacher collins syndrome {1996}. But since that time, we now believe it is called Dysgnathia complex which shows its main characteristics in Bodee as Micrognathia {small jaw} & in Bodee's case one that doesn't seem to grow at all. When I found out there was something wrong with Bodee it was like an adrenalin wow & %$#!, then after a few months that faded away into regular visits to our local plunket { an organization that checks on your newborns in New Zealand } After about 8 months Bodee had developed a snore that would leave my Dads for dead & he rattles windows {sorry Dad} It started to concern us a lot, along with his sleeping habits, an example would be putting him down at night at 6pm & having him still awake at 2am. In hind sight we think he may have been scared to sleep for lack of oxygen, because as he relaxed his air hole in the back of his mouth would close up. We started asking questions of the Doctors about the snoring, but found their responses a bit deflating as they seemed to think it wasn't a problem yet back at home we were freaking out. I must say at this point that if you think there's something wrong with your kids, without harassing the Doctors, defiantly follow your own instincts as it is you that is with your kids all the time & you'll know that there is something not right. Any way we ended up heading along to the Star-ship children's hospital to see the ear, nose, & throat specialist for a hearing test, & this is where every thing changed. We met the specialist, a man by the name of Dr Colin Barber, & in our book a man we would call a saint {& Deb}. He listened to us & agreed that there could be an airway & breathing problem, & to cut the story short Colin preformed a Tracheotomy on Bodee a few weeks later. From the Star-ship we were put in touch with another Doctor, a specialist in craniofacial surgery who operates at Auckland's Middle more hospital, another man we hold in high regard, Dr Martin Rees. He does all Bodee's Micrognathia corrective surgery through a technique called Mandibular distraction. Martin cuts through the Mandible & attaches a set of distractors each side of the break. We then wind the jaw out each day by 1mm, usually to the point of between 10 to 50mm further out. By the time Bodee was 5 years old he had had 20 general anesthetics not all for his jaw, some grommets, dental work, Tracheotomy, you might think after all those that things get easier on you but it doesn't, as I'm writing this it's NZs end of summer 2002 & we are waiting on a jaw operation at the moment. It's pretty hard on you seeing your kids getting cut up all the time, but also truing to be the strong parent as they recover. One of the hardest things I've had to do is literally hold Bodee in a head lock & wind his jaw out, while he screamed & thrashed about, I felt like mean old Dad & it tears ya heart out but it has to be done. These days it's a lot easier as he lets us clean the pin sites, he doesn't like it but he lets us do it. Well that's my run down but come back as my wife is carrying Bodee's sister Kayla, & we have found out she has Dysgnathia complex too. So we will add more soon