I'm Bound to Compare...

Thanks to my mother-in-law, who brought me a journal the day after Precious Miracle was born, I have hand-written entries from each of our NICU days, chronicling the disbelief and shock I felt after our girl was born and the desperate hope and faith that I had that she would not only pull through her early birth but also thrive. It also documents the love Hubby and I had for her from the day the stick indicated we were going to be parents. My journaling continued through homecoming and it's interesting to look back on the things I have written.

It was always written with a positive tone, even through the documented tears, to convey to my little girl as she reads it in the future, that we NEVER gave up hope, that we knew in our hearts she was going to make it and be just fine. The thing my journal never captured fully, were the days and emotions leading up to My Nut's early birth. That was just too painful to write out and too difficult to live through again, at that time. In fact, aside from a glossed over account documented in short essays I have written, there is no hard core documentation of exactly what we went through and the details of those horrific days. Yes, horrific is the only way to describe it, a word I would never, ever think to pen in a journal created specifically for my girl's eyes.

And so, here I am at 23w 3d, the same gestation when things took a turn in my first pregnancy. It is hard not to compare where I was last time as I pray desperately for a different outcome, an outcome that does not involve 105 days in the NICU, but a plump, full-term baby that is placed in our arms immediately after birth, a baby that is not left behind in an isolette: a real take-home baby.

Pardon the cliche, but hindsight is 20/20, especially in a first pregnancy. Gosh, if I only knew then what I know now...

The other thing I should mention, which makes it even more emotionally taxing, is that my last menstrual period with Precious Miracle fell on Thursday. The same is the case with Baby Boy. So basically, my dates line up the same in terms of the day of the week. Every Thursday, I celebrate a new week as was the case the first time around. So 23w 3d for Baby Boy is a Sunday, just like it was with Precious Miracle. Perhaps it wouldn't be so significant to me if the days themselves were staggered. But, things happen for a reason, and I am seizing the opportunity for therapeutic gain by writing what I've never written.

Okay, so it was confirmed that 23w 3d with Precious Miracle was also a Sunday. Hubby had an open house that day and someone wanted to show one of his listings. I was scheduled to meet an agent with her clients at 2:00. Well, earlier in the day, I passed a big chunk of mucus. I called the doctor on call (not 100% sure who but almost certain it wasn't either of the two who follow me now) who told me to drink fluids and rest on the couch, that there is increased discharge in pregnancy and what I am feeling is "normal".

So, I pumped the water non-stop and since I was just opening a door, felt it was okay to meet the agent, I'm normal, right? So I arrived at the house, turned on the lights and sat on the living room sofa, with a view of the street and waited for the woman to arrive. The sofa was white and I remember thinking, gosh, would we have to buy these people a new sofa if I delivered my baby right here or would a cleaning suffice? But it matches the love seat and chair so we if had to buy a new sofa, we would probably need to buy them a whole new living room set. Crazy thoughts started to pop in my head as I was physically beginning to feel worse.

The sellers were of an ethnicity in which a special clock above their mantle chimed a prayer, a very loud prayer, that scared the daylights out of me. The shock my body felt as I was startled out of my seat, I was convinced, was enough to send me into labor.

I remember feeling hungry for a BLT and wanted so much to go to the deli to pick one up but didn't want to stand on my feet anymore than I had to. The woman who was supposed to arrive at 2:00 never did and after spending two hours worrying between games of solitaire on my Treo, felt it was time to leave. I normally wouldn't have waited that long - maybe a half hour at the most but I was just out of it. I remember joking with my husband that I could have sat my own open house that day sitting there idle from 2-4 PM.

That's really all I remember from the day. The big part for me was feeling like I was going to have my baby on the white sofa of my husband's client. That, I suppose, was a premonition that something was bound to go wrong. Now, had I known that I just passed my mucus plug, I most certainly would have been at the hospital and not sitting in some strange living room. But, here is where I always go with this: perhaps had I sought intervention that day, the doctors could have monkeyed around causing my daughter to be born earlier than her 24w 5d and her outcome may not have been what it turned out to be.

Today is Precious Miracle's two-year adjusted birthday. We stopped adjusting back in July when she actually turned two but here she is on what, according to 40 weeks, would have been her second birthday, going potty all by herself. And when I say all by herself, I mean just that. Hubby and I are instructed to get out of the bathroom as the door closes and she gets on the potty and goes. When she's done, she exclaims, "I did it!" and requests an M&M for her efforts. We couldn't be more blessed than we are right now and for that we are extremely grateful. Focusing on the miraculous child we have is the only way to ease the pain of her early days.