Happy Homecoming Day!

Yesterday was our NICU homecoming day. It is a special day in our house that we always talk about celebrating more. This year was a little different. This year I became more aware of how long our NICU stay really was. Normally we just talk about how we were in the NICU for 67 days. This time I was able to see all that we have done since our daughter’s birthday. We have lived so much life since her birthday in June. We have had birthdays, concerts, trips, parties, started school, and so much more. It has been a busy two months. I never think of our NICU stay as two months. There was no life being lived. It was just Groundhog Day every day. Work, NICU, home, repeat. We knew it was a while, but we had blinders on and were just trying to bring our baby home. I can only compare it to running a race. You don’t stop and think of how far you have run. You just focus on the finish line. You just keep your head down and run, staring at that finish line. You don’t realize how far you ran until the end and you have a chance to stop running and are able to reflect on what you have just done. I guess eleven years later I am finally doing that. I am finally catching my breath and looking back on what we had done. How did we do that? How grueling that must have been. Maybe it is because the Olympics just ended, but it is easy for me to compare the NICU stay to the steeplechase. Not just a normal race but one with barriers and water jumps. There is one big piece that some might miss….WE DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS AND WE HAVEN’T TRAINED FOR THIS!!! But we do it! We do it for our babies. We do it because we have to. So I think we definitely need to celebrate those Homecoming Days. Celebrate the day we left the NICU and brought our babies home. Celebrate all that you endured during that NICU stay. But most of all celebrate that you, my fellow NICU parent, are a BADASS!!!