I really, really, really want to go back in time to when the girls were about 3 months old and hold them. Just for one day (really 2 days - 1 day for with Hassie Clare and 1 day with Quinn). I want to hold them, smell them, feed them from my body and squeeze them as tight as I can without hurting them. I will even settle for 1 hour.
As a mother, I have enjoyed every stage of their life. I've cherished every milestone, every sweet memory that my brain will retain. But for the life of me, I can't remember the first 6 months of my children's lives. Was it amnesia caused by exhaustion? Did I hit my head?
I have bits and pieces of memories but nothing solid. I can't remember what it felt like to hold either one of them when they weighed 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds. When I am away from them for any length of time, their weight on my body is what I miss the most. Silly I know. But as soon as I pick them up and hold them tight, all seems right with the world. So why can't I remember that feeling when they were brand new?
The first 6 months is such a blur. Jamie and I were both back to working full time. I worked from home. We had a lot of help, especially from my mom and mother-in-law. Jamie and I worked in shifts at night. I would take the 10-2:30 shift and he would take the 2:30-6 and then he would have to leave for work. We went to the doctor all the time. Various specialist for various reasons caused by prematurity. This is when I would dress the girls up in the really cute outfits people bought them. The logistics of going out in public was tough because a) there was two of them b) they were each hooked up to their own apnea monitor that had lots of wires and c) we could not let people touch them out of fear of getting them sick. We could not take the girls anywhere but to doctor appointments because it was RSV season. This is a potentially deadly disease to premature babies. So we kept them isolated from the world until they were about 9 months old. Then we were lucky enough that our insurance plan picked up the outrageously expensive (about $2000 per shot if I recall correctly) RSV shot. The shot is given every 3 months during RSV season and our insurance paid for it for 2 years.
Anyway, I'm getting way off topic here. My point is that time is going by too fast for me. I need to slow down. I'm starting to realize that once the day is over, I can never get that day back again. I need to "stop and REALLY smell the roses" instead of "stopping to look at the rose, have a brief thought in my head that the rose is pretty, snapping a photo of it and quickly moving on to something else." I have a feeling that with time, a lot of the memories of special moments I have with my girls will start to fade, or be replaced with new special moments. Maybe I should just be thankful that I'm one of the lucky ones that get to experience this unbelievable ride called motherhood.
Photo of the first time I got to hold them both at the same time when they were still in the NICU. The total weight of both of them is 8 pounds 13 ounces. They were 9 days old. Our favorite nurse took the pic.
No comments:
Post a Comment