Tess is 2 months old in normal people time! Our little girl is growing so fast it takes my breath away. She’s 4 lbs 12 oz today. As I’ve only been following her on the blog the last 5 days, seeing her in person will be a delicious shock. I’m thinking tonight’s reunion time. For now I’ll focus on work and laundry. I know myself: I had to come up with a job that would keep my mind off the hospital!
Last night we were talking about going home, trying to picture it. I can’t even imagine walking out of the hospital with Tess much less walking into our house with her! What I can picture is sitting in the back seat of the car with her on our way back. I feel like she’ll be staring out the window, even if she can’t see more than light and a blur of colors. I wonder if she’ll cry more or less, if she’ll feel like we destroyed a perfectly good routine, or if the novelty of it all will exhaust her. I have this sliver of mental image of tucking her into her bassinet for an afternoon nap at home that takes my breath away. Could it be this simple? When we go home, will this 3 months fade away into the back of our minds, leaving us to experience the small joys of normal parenting? I frankly don’t think there’s any such thing.
I’m trying to be realistic. We’re going home to renovation, not a quiet house. I’ll still be working part-time as that was my only way of doing this logically and sanely. The domestic goddess isn’t my style. We’ll have so many doctor appointments and home therapy sessions it will boggle the mind, in addition to adoption home visits before the finalization. We’ll have to sort out who sees her out of the bubble and where the bubble can go. Dave’s worried about us getting smacked with ‘the night shift’, which is justified.
Still, the simple image of opening our front door, of tucking her into that bassinet – they give me peace every time I think of them.
10pm
Saw, fed, held, LOVED our little girl tonight. It seems impossible, but 5 days really is a lot in the NICU! We picked up right where we left off – Tess and I and the nurses. We all missed each other! Dave told me he needs me to take the afternoon tomorrow. I think I can manage that!
Great reflection here – really beautiful to read, Maggey! And yes, you guys are going to get absolutely walloped by the night shift… though you might luck out and benefit from all the great work the NICU team is doing with Tess. She might sleep though earlier and more reliably than Liam did. Those few months we had of waking up every 2-3 hours were absolutely brutal. It felt like our only energy came from snuggling our boy – the dopamine high would give us just enough energy to make it through work and do it all again!
er. Sleep _through_ earlier. not sleep though earlier.