Monday Memory

As we prepare for this year's March for Babies (formerly WalkAmerica), I've been recalling the early weeks of our boys' lives. Much like their birthday, this time leading up to the walk and the realization of the incredible gift we have been given causes me reflect on where we've been, what we've been through to get where we are today. In an effort to document some of these thoughts and memories, post more regularly, and to share the commitment we have made by choosing to support the March of Dimes by walking each year, I am going to start having "Monday Memory". While looking at some pictures from our NICU days this morning, I was overwhelmed by the raw emotion I still experience when I see their tiny little bodies, covered with tubes for nourishing, medicating, breathing, in plastic boxes (isolettes). I took a lot of close ups then so it is hard to tell how small and fragile they really were. There are a few [pictures] though with my or Kelly's hand, a regular sized (small) Ty Beanie Baby or some other normal sized thing in the picture as well and the perspective from those is shocking - and I was there - but it still is incredible for me to see. I think because I am so far removed from it now that is is kind of surreal to look at these crazy, healthy, wild, smart and unique 4 year old boys and know that they are lucky, blessed, to be alive at all.

C, our smallest and least stable baby (his NICU experience was filled with peaks and valleys, a roller coaster of good and bad days without any indication how things would ultimately turn for him) is the most amazing, determined, silly, sweet and stubborn little boy I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I have never articulated this to anyone, but there was a day that I went to see him - the morning after we'd received a midnight call telling us he was being moved back to Intensive Care from a less critical nursery - when I looked at my tiny baby and my heart was gripped with fear, pain and completely breaking because for the first time in the 4 weeks since the boys had been born, I did not know if we would bring them all home. It was the first (and only, I think) time I broke down - I mean really lost it - in the NICU. This was compounded by the fact that the nurse caring for him that day was the only one (out of many to whom I owe so much for their exceptional care of our boys) who I had previously felt was inattentive, distracted, patronizing (to Kelly and I) and - I realize this is harsh, but it was how I felt at the time - incompetent. Here was this baby of mine, desperately wanted and loved, whose life was literally hanging in the balance. There was not one thing I could do to protect him, to fix him, to save him. It was my worst day. I'd like to say that I felt comforted by the love and support of our families, by the prayers from all over the world for our boys, but at that moment, I had never felt so alone and unsure of what to do. There was nothing I could do. So that is what I did. Nothing. Nothing but sit and wait, next to the baby I could no longer hold because he was again full of tubes, and pray and hope and plead and beg for mercy and wait some more. If you've been to our blog before, you know that he [C] did come home with us and is our craziest punk of the bunch. There are lots of pictures of him as he is today (cute, huh?). Here are a few from his first days. We've come a long way Baby...