Five years

December tenth doesn't mean much to Eric. He doesn't get presents and it isn't his birthday. To Momma however, December tenth never goes by without specially noting its significance in our lives. Mark this day on your calendars as the day we brought Eric home from his first 96 days of life spent in the hospital.

For most bringing your newborn baby home is expected and normal. For first time parents who are also parents to preemies, bringing your baby home is a bit more terrifying. Any parent who enters the NICU for any amount of time is greeted to parenthood with fear rather than joy . This first time parent is introduced to medical terms, treatments, immunizations, and ongoing developmental monitoring. This first time parent is told to stay far away from crowds and anyone with a runny nose or cough of any kind. This first time parent is told that to give there child the best health outcomes they need to everything in their power to prevent their preemie from getting a cold for at least TWO YEARS and that toddlers carry the plague.

The pressures and challenges this first time parent comes home with are much different the first time parents of newborns. I didn't realize how different until I had Noah at full term under the most normal circumstances.


At the time Eric came home I was still convinced that babies must BELONG in the hospital for a LONG time because how can anyone ever be allowed to bring someonw so fragile and little into a house full of obstacles and un-sterile-ness. When he came home his  Dadda and Momma and gotten zero sleep the night before. You see, we spent that night in the hospital with Eric. We attended to him and watched him all night to make sure he was breathing, eating, swallowing, and pooping. There was no twenty-four hour medical surveylance and no monitors. There was only Aaron, me, and Eric.

Babies need someone watching them at ALL TIMES right? I mean, in the hospital he had a nurse assigned to meet his needs at all times and those nurses never slept. It took only four days and a visit from the home-visit nurse to understand that indeed, yes, you must find a way to let yourself sleep and SLEEP WHILE HE IS SLEEPING. Seriously? Who will watch him sleep if we are both sleeping?

Five years later I look at the parent I have become and the person I have always been and compare it to that time in my life. There is nothing like it. It is almost like an out of body experience. Some days I amazed at how I found myself again and how we found our marriage and how we have moved so far beyond there that some days it feels like it happened in another existence 

Here we are five years later enjoying life in our little house with our TWO little boys and doing all the normal things families do. Remembering those difficult and scary times when we left the house only to go to the doctor's office or for a breath of fresh air helps put today into perspective and find the joy in the everyday actions involved in the balancing act of  family, full-time jobs, owning a home, and just taking it all in.