One year ago today I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. His party yesterday was quite the celebration, although Noah wasn't sure what to do wtih all of the people. I have to say a big thank you to everyone who came. It was wonderful seeing so many family and friends!!!
Anyway, although I celebrate the birth of Noah, I also have to look back at this past year. This year has shaken me to the core, broken me down, and re-molded me into a very different person. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but there is no other way to describe what being Noah's mom has been like. Which brings me to these thoughts....
During my first year with Noah I have learned:
-What it means to be patient
-How to use the metric system (It wasn't until he turned nine months old
that I actually knew his weight in pounds)
-How to hold a baby without actually picking him up
-The anatomy of the normal heart
-What a good vein for an IV looks like (I can't even count how many times I have wished I could put my veins into Noah's body!!)
-That the things that I take for granted, like eating and breathing, do not always come so easy
-How to speak in acronyms. There are the funny ones (PRN), the scary ones (ECMO), the close-to-home ones (HLHS) and the ones that I'm still scratching my head over (MRSA must stand for something besides "hospital ick")
-How to work an oxygen tank, feeding pump, suction machine, nebulizer and pulse oximeter (I had never even heard of half of those before)
-How to give a sub-q injection (could have lived without this one)
-The exact number of floor tiles from one wall to the next in the family
waiting room at All Children's Hospital (while I was counting them, Bill was pacing them, so I'm not sure they are all still there!)
-How to draw up 30 medication syringes a day
-How to trust others in the care of my children (this was a tough one)
-The quickest and most efficient way to travel to St. Petersburg
-What it feels like to be powerless
-The importance of being powerful (this comes with the territory of being Noah's advocate)
-What the very best and worst meals are at All Children's Hospital
-That the world is full of truly generous people
-That fragile does not necessarily mean weak
-How to rejoice in the little things
-How to cry out with all of my heart
-How to hold back my tears when it is important for me to be strong
-The importance of eventually letting those tears fall (I'm surprised I have never flooded the bathroom of the Ronald McDonald House)
-What it feels like to be broken
-What it feels like to be complete
-That everyone has a different sense of "normal"
-How to form a relationship with a double electric breast pump
-To be confident in my "mother bear" instincts
-How to look at an echo picture and see more than a black and gray blob
-How to schedule three doctor appointments and two therapies in a day around a feeding and med schedule
-That a pacifier can be my friend (I laugh now when I think about how I swore that Noah would never have one - now I love it that he does!)
-That deep friendships can form in the midst of painful circumstances
-That it is okay to laugh and cry at the same time
-That some days are just going to be rough ones and on those days it's okay to eat a few too many chocolate chip cookies
-How to hang on for dear life to one simple word.....HOPEFULLY
-How to survive on VERY little sleep
-The usefulness of 4X4 gauze, adhesive remover, tender grips and toothettes
-How to pick out all of the good stuff from Noah's bedside cart when we are discharged (and to think that I took nothing the first time - crazy mom!!)
-That even when I think I'm at the end of my rope, God always provides a little more strength for me to hang on
-That life is precious and some lives end a little too soon (permanently engraved in my heart are the names of all of the heart angels that went home to Heaven during our time in the hospital)
-That even though this wasn't the road we chose to travel, it has been the most amazing detour and I wouldn't turn around for the world!!!