June 7th, 2011

 

This day will forever be the most beautiful day in my life. No, it isn't the girls' birthday like most other parents' favorite day or day that changed them forever.....it was the day that we got to bring our precious babies home from the NICU. It had been a long 110 days in the NICU--full of twists, turns, accomplishments, and setbacks.....lots and lots of setbacks. They had warned me that it would be a rollercoaster full of those things but I never really understood why they called it that because rollercoasters are suppose to be fun right? I think it would've been more accurate to call parenting or new motherhood a rollercoaster because yeah, it is hard at first with the lack of sleep, and carrying for this tiny little newborn that demands to be fed every 2-3 hours around the clock, but then you also get the fun and happy times, the playful smiles, and getting to watch them sleep peacefully in your arms. Our experience was never like that--a far, far cry from that actually. We were scared for their lives the whole time starting 11 days before they were actually born. There was never that excitement that most people have when they are about to have their babies. After they were born, the concerns only grew. Ventilators, low blood pressure, low blood sugar, Apnea and Brady spells, increased oxygen support. Brain bleeds. We would come home and leave our cell phones on the nightstand praying it wouldn't ring throughout the night to tell us to rush up there. If it did ring before dawn it would more than likely be to tell us that the girls had passed. In the mornings we would call and check up on the girls and they would tell us stories about having to bag them by hand to get them to breathe--even with the ventilator. The NICU nurses would give them chest compressions when they would have a brady spell. If the nurse took too long to come to the phone when I would call was it because she was busy doing these things to my little P & K? Was she having a hard time stabilizing them like I had witnessed when I was there so many times before? I felt like I was being dragged down this horrible path in life that I had never expected to be on in the first place. The doctors tried to be optimistic--they would tell us that they most likely would have cerebral palsy, be deaf, blind or any number of these things. They outcome for them looked pretty grim, but of course we all remained hopeful. I didn't even hold my girls until they were over a month old and even then, I was only allowed to once a day for maybe 15-20 minutes. Some days it would just be too much for them and they would only be able to tolerate it for less than 10 minutes. They would stop breathing or worse--they heart would slowly start missing beats and stopping. There's just so much heartbreak in that that it still hurts to talk about. Then one day, I went in and they weren't on any oxygen. None. I could see their beautiful little chubby faces. If it hadn't been for all the other monitors, they would've looked like normal, healthy little newborns. A week later, we were signing discharge papers. Was this really happening? I could hold them whenever I wanted for however I wanted to? I could take them home? It was terrifying. I still saw them as weak, little babies that were still behind glass and that I couldn't touch. It was surreal. It was the greatest day of my life. Everything else in the world didn't seem to matter. I always said that I would take them however God wanted to give them to me...be it blind, deaf, whatever. They were mine. I am happy to report that 2 years later they are still the loves of my life and the light of my soul. They amaze me everyday. They are perfect. This day is my most treasured--even more so than their birthday I would say. I feel like this day just symbolizes so much accomplishment, struggle, and defeat. And most importantly, two little miracles that somehow found their way to me.