and six years ago today...

Since I posted about Grace's surgery, I thought it was only fitting to at least mention that six years ago today, our true sleep deprivation began (Thankfully Abby started sleeping through the night right around Christmas, so it didn't last too long). 

This is the day they allowed us to adopt her from the hospital to come home and live with us.  I say that because I used to really feel like the nurses were her Mom, and I was just a visitor.  We learned that which nurse you were assigned everyday is critical to the level of love and care your baby receives in the NICU.  When you have another child at home, you can't camp out at the NICU like the first time Mom's do.  You just can't.  And it's an awful feeling.  When you're there you feel like you're neglecting the child at home and when you're at home you feel you're neglecting the child in the hospital.  You learn to rely on the nurses to fill in the gaps.

Although it could be argued that NICU nurses in general are among the most gentle and caring, no two are created equal and within days of Grace's birth we learned that Nurse Christine was in an elite class of her own.  I love this woman to this day.  We learned through talking to her that she had suffered a very late miscarriage over the summer and that her first day back to work was the day Grace and Abby were born.  She told me that she became attached to Grace immediately a bit out of her own need to love something.  She always asked to be assigned to Grace when she was working.  I knew when Christine was on duty, that it was as if I was there, because she was being held and touched and talked to and sang to.  Christine would also take poloroids of Grace if she was awake or doing something new and leave them for us in little hand made envelopes.  I treasure these blurry, very out of focus photos, and the captions she would write on them.

Sorry, this wasn't supposed to be an ode to Nurse Christine.  But she is wonderful.

Passing the car seat test (to be sure she didn't have an apnea episode) was the final exam before graduation:

It was the first time we really got to see her in clothes.  We dressed her in the same "coming home" outfit that we had brought Abby home in.  At five pounds, she swam in it:

Here's the loved Nurse Christine:

And the three of us.  Christine and I had a good hug and a cry at some point (I am a good foot taller than her):

Poor Harland was in the dreaded Atlanta (where he was when I went into labor) for the coming home event.  They told us it was going to be a few more days, or he never would have left, and he was pretty upset.  My mother and his came to the hospital with me:

Then we actually dared to leave with her.  I'm not a crazy person.  Harland was out of town so we packed up and went to stay at my parents.  I was not going it alone with twins on the first night!  My Aunt Judy came over and between the three of them, they took care of the girls while I deciphered all of Grace's medication.  Yeah, that took me almost two hours to work out the schedule.  There was a lot of medication.



Grace ate up the constant contact and loving she got at home.  You could tell.  She would stare you down and try to connect with you.  And that picture above is her falling in love with my Aunt Judy.  She has always loved her more than anyone else and this picture is where it all started.