The 24th of August

Yesterday was the anniversary of bringing our little Vivian home from the NICU.

August 24 a year ago was a surreal day. Two weeks and a day had passed since giving birth to Vivian, and every day of those two weeks was spent in a back and forth pattern of home-pump and try to eat and hydrate-drive back to the NICU to feed and be with Vivian. Over and over again, all day for 15 days. Fifteen days doesn't seem like such a big deal, but at the time, I only knew what it was like to be a mom in that strange pattern. I didn't know when there would be any other way.

On that Friday a year ago, we were finally sent out into the big wide world with our little girl. Before we were officially discharged, our favorite nurse Kim told Vince to take me out for breakfast. She told us where to go (a restaurant we had passsed ten times a day for two weeks in our back and forths to the hospital) and to enjoy a final meal with just the two of us. Vince and I sat in the restaurant sensing we were on the verge of something wonderful, but also numb with the worry of the unknown. I remember fighting back tears that wanted to fall into my pancakes for so many reasons.

Back at the hospital, Viv was detached from machines, dressed in too-big preemie clothes and had just that morning made it back up to her birth weight. I was wheeled out of the hospital in a janky wheelchair by an elderly volunteer with Viv in her infant seat, that cliche leaving the hospital moment tarnished with too many worries and pieces of sadness to really be enjoyed. We drove home. We walked through the front door for the first time as three, a family. Amazing and terrifying, beautiful and scary - always the light and the dark. But we were home, and fifteen days following Vivian's birth, we were experiencing a new kind of birth - the birth of a family without beeps or nurses or sterile procedures.

Fast forward a year, and each day of the fifteen days since Viv's first birthday, I have devoted a moment here, a few moments there, to remembering. I can't help it - there's that part of me that needs to remember. The crepe myrtle trees are blooming everywhere, and the sight of them evokes a visceral response from me as Viv and I drive around town doing errands. It takes all of about 8 seconds, and my mind is there - the first taste of hospital life: the smell, the sounds, the feeling in my mamaheart.

Last night the three of us went back to the restaurant that Nurse Kim sent us to a year ago. We ate dinner together, Viv in a high chair happily playing and eating avocado from Vince's sandwich. A year ago I couldn't fathom being at this point. Vivian's so full of life and personality. She's active and silly and so engaging. Last year her little less than 5 pound body didn't phase me, today my arm aches from holding her after a few minutes, her chunky thighs wrapped around my side. Last year we fed her an ounce or two at a time, today she's got big bottles, filled with 5 ounces of food and she's opening her mouth for more solid food. We've officially been a family for a year, tucked cozily in the walls of our home, our nest. There is a long list of dates and milestones etched in my mind - but this one was definitely worth celebrating.