Tomorrow is the anniversary of Virginia's earthquake which means today is the day we brought our son home one year ago! I can remember how excited we were to drive up to our building, FINALLY with our baby in the backseat after a four-week NICU stay. The next two weeks, although exhausting with round-the-clock gravity bolus naso-gastric feeds (feeding every three hours by holding a syringe attached to his nose-stomach tube, pouring milk into the syringe which entered via gravity) were fabulous! Instead of driving 30 min + to see our son, we could hold him whenever we wanted! He was able to leave his small NICU bassinet behind and explore the fun things we had for him (like Daddy's fabulous black and white drawings that kept James enthralled for hours).
Before James' first birthday Mark and I looked through the early pictures of James. We had a hard time viewing the ones from these first two weeks of his home life as we forgot how terrible his breathing was, how pale he looked. These pictures brought back difficult memories. We couldn't believe we were talking to James as if everything was fine, we forgot that was our "normal" (Although, it was and it wasn't. Some of the breathing issues were normal, but he soon developed an infection that sent him back to the hospital. We spent the second week of his home stay trying to figure out what was wrong until, finally, his pediatrician realized something wasn't right and sent us back to the hospital).
We are so happy to have those times behind us. I love realizing how far we have come as I listen to Mark and James chat and James burst into his cute chuckle. Check out the difference between our boy last year and this year:
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| Attacking his pictures. |
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| One of his favorite funny faces! |
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| Great pic from today. His hair looks cute like Uncle John's. |
With love.
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