How We Do It

As I walked out of the hospital the other day I ran into another mother that I had met at Miami Valley. We chatted about why we each had moved to Children's and I learned that her 5 month-old little girl moved over because she had to be trach'd. Of course, the first thing I thought was, "My nightmare from two weeks ago. She is living it," and felt soooo bad for her. But what stood out to me was how OK she was with it! She didn't start crying or seem defeated when she told me. Suddenly, I found myself transported into the position of other people who find out that I have a daughter in the NICU. I wondered, "How does she do it? Five months? Trach'd?" This really got me thinking. People sometimes ask me, "How do you do it?"

Before becoming the mother of a 1lb 7oz micropremie I could NEVER have imagined life as the mother of a micorpremie. I couldn't have even fathomed how the parents could bear to leave their babies in the hospital and go home or watch their child undergo hundreds of heel pricks, a dozen blood transfusions, multiple surgeries, weeks of intubation, etc. These things seemed nothing but a nightmare to me. I remember wondering how early my babies could be born without having to stay in the hospital because that would be my goal for keeping the twins inside. I didn't even want to leave them one single day.

Since becoming the mother of a 1lb 7oz micropremie I live one day at a time and can do nothing other than love my daughter, do everything and anything I can for her, and try to maintain a normal-as-possible life for myself and my family. I don't know 'how' I do it. I just do it. I don't exactly have a choice. And it's not over. We will certainly have new challenges to deal with and Chloe has more battles to fight. I don't know 'how' we will handle those but I know for certain that we will. We will square our shoulders and continue on in this new journey that we call "Life." We're not always graceful or elegant and we don't always know the right thing to say or the right way to act. We just keep trying to do our best and trying be the best we can be.

So I think maybe, while I really don't know how she does it, I know why she does it. She has no choice because she loves her daughter. And that's all she can do.