They’re Still Alive, One Year Later

A year ago today we walked into the back of the NICU/ICN at UNM Children’s Hospital for the last time. We had high hopes of getting to bring our babies home on that February day, but as the hours dragged on…and I do mean DRAGGED, we started to lose hope. It seemed like everyone who had the power to send us home kept disappearing and when they were around, they were especially quiet about the possibility of us going home.  I had spent the last 11 weeks trying not to get my hopes up and not asking when we’d get to go home, but I felt that we were finally ready and I remember thinking that they were going to make us stay just one more night…just for fun. I decided it was because they liked us and liked our babies. I mean, they were some cute little chickens!

But alas, at almost 7:00 p.m., the nurse practitioner appeared with our discharge paperwork. We had to borrow a cart to help us get all of our belongings, 2 babies, several gallons of breastmilk (literally), and our emotions to the car. It was a bizarre time…we’d been there for so long, 78 days to be exact, and then they just sent us home with our babies. There was clapping and crying but no oxygen, no monitors, NO NURSES!? Yikes. It was terrifying, but we made it the whole 3 miles home without incident. And then we made it day by day and night by night after that. Our babies have been home for one year today.

I’ve gone on and on and on before about how thankful I am for our doctors and nurses during our stay in the NICU & ICN, but I have to say it again: our babies would not be alive if it weren’t for these incredible people. It’s hard to explain to someone who’s had a baby full term with little or no complications, but our babies literally did not know how to breathe when they were born. They didn’t have a suck reflux and couldn’t eat at all for several weeks (they were tube fed). They weren’t suppose to be out in the open yet, but they made it because they received awesome care.

A lot has happened in the past year, and I’ve shared many things on the blog, but a few stories and photos here and there don’t really show how far we’ve come. Unfortunately, I didn’t start really documenting things until the kiddos were out of the hospital (a year ago today!), but here’s a little compilation of photos for each babe. Sometimes I think they haven’t changed or grown in months and months, and then I see these photos all together and I realize that they’ve grown from preemies, to babies, to toddlers! I think the current category might be better described as “drunk midget,” though that might be a bit offensive, so I’ll go with “miniature zombie” instead.

These two slideshows are not long (like the last one I made), so you don’t need to worry about setting aside half your day to watch. I cried after I made these, so…if you’re the crying type, get a tissue or two. Enjoy!