NICU reunion

We went to our first NICU reunion over the weekend. It was nice. The food was fine. The nurses were almost non-existent! That's the whole reason that we went! We wanted to see the nurses who helped our boys during their first month of life. We wanted to thank them for taking such good care of US, too! We only saw two of them, and we had to call the NICU and specifically ask that one come down. That was disappointing. But, we did get to see our FAVORITE nurse (Auntie Rose), so we were happy.

We also got to see a couple of the other parents/kids who were in the NICU at the same time. There were a lot of people since our NICU was one of the top two in the entire state, so trying to find anyone that we had made a connection with was difficult. So many kids go in and out of that place every year, and as your child progresses (or sometimes regresses), they are moved from place to place - sort of like "graduating" from intensive care to constant care to frequent care to monitored care. So, it was hard to form too many friendships with other parents. However, we did see Baby G and his parents who managed to make friends with almost everyone since he was in the NICU for 101 days.

Can you imagine?!?! 101 days spent at the hospital. 101 days of pumping milk without ever have the baby latch. 101 days with more than 2/3 being incredibly stressful and full of uncertainty that your child would ever go home. Well, they are an amazing couple, and Baby G is doing great. He's 18 months now, but since he was so premature, he is gestationally only 13 months old. He'll always be a small kid; at birth, a dollar bill covered his entire torso!. He'll hit developmental milestones (walking, talking, crawling, etc.) later than other kids for the first two years of life. After that, he'll be hard to stop.

So, today I'm grateful that we only had a few super-scary moments. (Necrotizing Enterocolitis is NOT a cake walk. It affects 20% of premature babies and kills half of those!) I'm grateful that our stay only lasted 34 days. I'm grateful that we had such awesome care. I'm grateful that Baby G is thriving. I'm grateful to be a mom.