Celebrating NICU Grads

When we received our invitation to the St. Joseph’s NICU Reunion Picnic, I felt a much more complicated array of emotions than I usually feel when I get a cardstock invitation in the mail.  I felt excitement and disappointment, satisfaction and anxiety, and questions rushed into my head, such as “Am I ready to go to this?”, “Does reunion really mean just that?  Can I expect to see her old nurses and doctors from the NICU, many of whom were loved and some of whom I felt otherwise about… all of whom are associated in my subconscious with a very painful time in our lives?” 

The slogan of the picnic written on the invitation read “We Grow Healthy Children.”  And I thought, will Ari’s presence and our experience be a testament to that statement or will it be viewed as the opposite?  I thought about the great many reasons why I didn’t wholeheartedly feel like going, and then I thought about the one that made me want to go… my kids, and especially Ari, deserve to have fun.  And that one reason was enough to make up my mind.

This picnic was one of the few things in my life that I made sure to be on time for.  Not that anyone would notice or expect us right when they opened the gates at Kiwanis Park, but we were right there anyway in true NICU parent form.  From the moment we were greeted, I was happy we went, and I got the feeling that it was going to be a day to remember. 

Since we were one of the first families to arrive at the picnic, we had the whole place to ourselves, and it was like a carnival wonderland made just for us.  We had an entire bouncy house all to ourselves for a good 45 minutes before anyone else joined us.  There were no lines for games or food, and when people did start to trickle in, they were our kind of people.  You know how when you’re in Disneyland and everyone is friendly to one another, and you just feel like you have more in common with the rest of mankind than when you’re say, in Wal-Mart?  Well, this was an experience similar to that.  And Ari wasn’t the only kid who came in their wheelchair.  There were lots, and I loved each of them and their families the way you love your long lost relatives.  There was that feeling there, that feeling of camaraderie and kinship that you remember in your heart long after the last deflated balloon has been tossed in the trash.

And the sun was shining that day.  It shines everyday, but it was particularly beautiful that day.  Snow White and Santa Claus were there.  They let the kids explore the ambulance, police car, and fire truck.  And all the popcorn and hamburgers and snow cones and trips down the bouncy slide and face painting and pony rides were free.  So I never had to tell my kids that they couldn’t have a second cookie or that they could play the baseball toss “next time”, and I didn’t even think twice when Bella spilled her whole popcorn on the ground by accident.  I felt assured that this party was celebrating all the kids who graduated the NICU, not just the “healthy” ones.  And while I can’t honestly say that it made up for the times when they (the neonatologists) told me my baby was “Perpectly pine (‘perfectly fine’ with a Dr. Zozobrado accent)” when she wasn’t, or that we were imagining her seizures, or for reading us the wrong head ultrasound (another “Baby Girl Taylor” who had no complications), it was a great day nonetheless, because my Baby Girl Taylor was loving every minute of it. 

Did I still have a restless heart?  Yes.  I quickly dropped my guard, no longer afraid of what I might say/do if I saw Dr. Z again, but there were still mixed feelings that lingered.  Like those moments in the movies when you happy cry and sad cry at the same time; I walked that fine line all afternoon.  When we ate lunch, an adorable family plopped themselves down beside ours.  We chatted away, and asked friendly questions about one another between bites of hot dogs and coleslaw.  Turns out that their son and daughter are twins, the same ages as our boy/girl set.  You think that’s uncanny?  Later we come to find out that they don’t even live anywhere near St. Joes, but that they were instructed to go there instead of their home hospital because she went into labor at 33 weeks (like me) and her doctor told her that anything earlier than 34 weeks was automatically to be performed at St. Joes.  Not done yet… then I find out that she had a C-Section, not because she wanted one, but because her son (baby B) was breach, and her doctor refused to risk a natural delivery, even though her daughter (baby A) was head down and leading the way.

There is this Simpson’s episode in which Homer goes to this Italian restaurant and gets to look into the pot of sauce that the chef is cooking up in the kitchen. It was foretold that if you gaze into the sauce, you can see “what might have been”.  Looking at this family was like gazing into my pot of sauce.  For a moment, I heard myself whisper to Jake the words Homer said right before diving into the cauldron, “I want to live in the sauce”.  Jake nodded in acknowledgement, because he saw the episode and he had the same feelings.  But before I got home, I had my epiphany, just as Homer did before the end of the episode, and that was that I didn’t want to live in the sauce.  I’m sure it would’ve been better for everyone, and certainly for Ari, if I knew then what I know now, but I love our life now… so much that I’d be scared to go back and change it for fear that it might alter something else that I wouldn’t ever want to change.  Because, you know, as hard as it can sometimes be, this is us.  And “us” is what I adore.

 

Ari can’t get enough of bounce houses, but she rarely ever gets to play much in them because sometimes grownups aren’t allowed in, or it’s just too crowded for her and me both, so we can’t really move around.  This time was different.  We were the only ones it it, so I flipped her every way from Sunday, and my back still hasn’t recovered. :)

 

I wasn’t the only one unsure at times.  Ari couldn’t help but be nervous about the friendly ambulance drivers because of the negative associations that have been created from her previous experiences.  Poor little sweet.

 

This is what Ari flew in when she was transported from Chandler Regional Hospital to St. Joe’s via emergency air evacuation.

 

It was a play day, and we went all out!

   

Ari got the HOPE for Ari butterfly on her cheek, and she loved it!  I could just tell by how she was gazing and herself in the mirror admiringly that she felt like a princess.  It made my heart soar.  I want to paint sparkly pink butterflies on her cheeks everyday.

 

Normally, Ari is scared of animals, but she kept reaching and excitedly kicking her feet and telling me that she wanted to see this dog, so I let her.  She was just drawn to him, and you’d have thought she never had a problem with dogs at all.  When I told the owner, she seemed pleased but not at all surprised, and she informed me that the dog is a therapy dog, and his “job” is to help people relax.  So amazing and wonderful to see her unafraid!

 

Bella made a new friend by helping herself to a little girl’s popcorn.  Notice the look on the girl’s face in the second picture when Bella’s intentions become apparent to her.  But fear not, moments later, this same little girl was squeezing and loving Bella like she was her own little baby doll.

  

I thought that we were on a roll with the doggie, so I tried my luck with Ari on a horse, and she let me know that I was pushing the envelope.  So poor Ari missed out on the fun.  Bella, on the other hand, took to it like a pig to mud, “Giddy up!!! Ride ‘em cowboy!” she shouted at her horsey, kicking him in the sides with her spurless crocs, as soon as she mounted the saddle.