My immediate thought was "Yikes, how morbid! Who would go to a NICU Reunion?" and my next thought, which came so quickly afterward that it was almost simultaneous was "I WANT TO GO TO MY NICU REUNION!"
Having my children in the NICU was the most stressful and difficult time of my life. I had just gone from being HUGELY pregnant to having two children.
They were underweight, couldn't eat, slept all day, and were perfect and beautiful and I never wanted to be away from them. I felt the need to physically protect them at all times. (Celia said it best when she said "When I had my daughter I became a mother. When I had my twins, I became a Mama Bear.")
You DO NOT MESS with a Mama Bear of fragile twins. She will rip your head off (seriously, folks) before she lets you breathe your germs all over her babies.
But sometimes Mama Bears have to sleep, or eat, or just leave the hospital for fresh air and that is the most stressful time of all, because you have to trust the care of your children to someone else.
100%.
If you read my blog back then, you may recall that I did not do well leaving my children at the hospital without me.
But I also came to really love the nurses and doctors that looked after my children.
They knew my children, they loved them. They were their family when I was not there. And I had to trust my children with them, or else I would die of exhaustion and starvation.
Also, all of them saw my breasts (And some even grabbed hold of them when they were teaching me to nurse twins) and if that's not friendship, I don't know what is.
And we don't hang out at the hospital anymore. Nor do the NICU nurses ever come see us, because really - they're not our friends in real life. They're just our life-line in hospital-life.
But every milestone that the boys have hit, I've had this desire to call the NICU (I have the number in my phone still) and ask for our favorite nurses or doctors and say "Hi, this is Becky Pitcher. Remember my twins, Grey and Micah? Just wanted to tell you that they learned to sit up this week! They're doing so well. They've been so healthy and strong since we left you."
But again, that's weird.
And the nurses are busy taking care of other babies.
And I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't actually remember me.
But they might remember my children if I brought them a picture of them as newborns....
Turns out the hospital my boys were born at did have a NICU reunion, but it happened the week that I was in Montana with my parents. So we missed it.
I feel sad about it.
But we got a calendar with pictures of the nurses on it (actually, we got two since we had two babies at the hospital) And I love it.
Is that weird, too? It's nice to see the faces of people who took care of my kids in the wee hours of the night. Anyway...
For those of you with babies who had NICU or hospital stays, how do you feel about your nurses or doctors? Do you ever see them, or wish that you could?
If any of you are nurses, I'd love insight from your side too!
