A look back

With all the ranting I've done the past few days, I wanted to drop a little bit of sentimentality on y'all. Ace's homecoming anniversary is tomorrow, and that brings up a whole lot more mushy feelings than his birthday did. The day he was born was also one of the scariest days of my life, and I had a hard time squashing the resurgence of those feelings when his birthday rolled around this year.

Last year, on August 2nd, we spent the night at the hospital with Ace in a little bed next to us, just like all the other "normal" parents. We had spent the whole day learning about his apnea monitor and making various preparations, and all I could think about was spending the whole night with my little boy. The first thing I did after the NICU nurses brought him in was lay down and bring him into bed with me. I just lay there with my precious child in my arms, watching him breathe, watching him sleep, stroking his hair, kissing his face, and holding him very, very close.

When most women want to get pregnant, they have this vision of holding their baby, looking into his eyes, smiling at him peacefully, knowing that they'd never be torn apart. While I'd held Ace many, many times before, that night was different. 15 alarms weren't going off every couple of seconds, nurses and other families weren't talking, and there wasn't the ever present danger of a nurse taking him away from me for some reason or another. That night, it was just me and Ace and the whole rest of the world disappeared. Just like it does in those pregnancy test ads. Drew was there, of course, but he kinda just sat back and read.

We ate, fed Ace, bathed him in the sink, and settled in for the night. The nurses came in every 4 hours to do their thing and bring us a bottle (I remember that they called my milk "ninja turtle milk" because it was kinda green from the Vitamin C pills I had been taking). They weighed him at around 1 am, and he weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces. Most of them came in to say goodbye to him. I didn't sleep well that night - looking over to see my little boy right next to me was just too exciting. It was like Christmas Eve.

I've been feeling really weepy lately thinking about how exciting those days were for me, and how profoundly happy I was in anticipation of my baby finally coming home. Those were truly some of the happiest days of my life and remembering them makes it hard to do anything but hug Ace all the time.

I let Drew do the dirty job of taking Ace out of the bathtub. It's basically the worst part of Ace's day now - he LOVES taking baths. Now I'll swoop in and rock my little boy till he's very, very tired, and sing to him, and hold him close, and kiss his face, and stroke his hair. I love that little boy so much, he truly lights up my world and makes everything good. I'm still glad he's home.