Worth the quick read...

CTbride79 · September 2012

One of the moms In my FB group for the NICU where DS was born who had a full term baby, born very sick (they did not know about her issues until she was born), shared this, and I thought it quite nicely fit what the NICU experience is like for any parent, even though I think it was originally meant for parents of special needs children. It brought tears to my eyes!

***

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip ? to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy. But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
...

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.

But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley

jcsntms06 · September 2012

Thank you for sharing!

Journey33 · September 2012

oh I love this!! My girls were born premature and had some NICU time, we're in the process of trying to figure it all out now.. this was great to read!

missgooseyface · September 2012

Wow. Love it! Thank you for sharing

Pips09 · September 2012

That is really lovely and well-said.

PhillyGal34 · September 2012

that is exactly it... I love this! every time i see someone on FB that just had a baby I get jealous. I imagine what it would have been like to have had my son "normally" and hold him right away and if I'd have those cute pictures of mom and baby. I'm fortunate that they did let me hold him for a second before he was rushed to the NICU but you can sense my feelings of needing to tell him i loved him 10000 times in those seconds. ok now I am tearing up.... but yeah, this was really nice to read, thank you for sharing!

Bluebird2318 · September 2012

I love it, and it's so true! Thank you for sharing. I definitely struggle with "jealousy" when it comes to the experience of a full term pregnancy and a "normal" birth experience (well, as "normal" as a birth experience can be!), but at the same time... Even though I do admit that I would give anything to have had a full term pregnancy, the silver lining is that I get to experience a kind of joy that I don't believe the parents of strictly full term babies can quite understand. Yes, stepping into one's home for the first time with a new baby is a wonderful experience for any parent, but for a preemie parent it's even better. You feel excitement and joy with every little ounce baby gains, something that would probably have been dismissed with no special satisfaction if baby had been born full term. Every milestone will be that much more important to you. As happy as a full term parent can be when their baby learns to crawl, to walk, to talk, you will be even happier knowing that although your LO has had so much farther to come they have made it there with strength. To put it in terms of the writing itself; yes, I admit that I would love to make it to Italy one day, but even if I do, Holland will always have a special place in my heart.