"In the wee small hours of the morning"

I've been awake since 4 am.

My mind's been racing with a thousand pointless things.

From where I sit on the couch (having moved here after an hour of tossing and turning) I can see the moon- something I haven't bothered to notice for quite a while now. I wonder what other things I haven't taken notice of since Lilly and Josiah were born. (I apologize if you are one of the neglected things.)

We live in this weird, unbalanced, unconnected world of NICU visits. When we're there, all we dream about is being at home with the babies. When we're at home, all we want to do is be at the hospital holding, rocking, whispering to them.

It's extremely...........extremely heartbreaking for us that they don't sleep in their own cribs, in their own thoughtfully decorated nursery, with special blankets, bathed and lotioned with people who love them at their side.

Instead, when they wake up, it's to strangers who quickly change and feed them under florescent lights to the sound of alarming monitors and unfamiliar voices.

I feel empty and (guiltily) thankful when I leave the hospital every day. I'm grateful to stretch my legs and go home, but it's impossible to ever really enjoy any time there. When we're home, we're exhausted and we don't feel like parents. When we're at the NICU, we're defensive, tired, and irritated but at least we know that their delivery wasn't just some elaborate dream and that we are, in fact, staring at the precious faces of our (very early) newborns.

When I pictured myself pregnant, I never thought I'd feel (or be) so huge, but at least it was "normal".

When we dreamed about meeting the babies....out of all the scenarios we talked about, we never considered that it would be this way. There are some mornings I wake up and feel so lost without them. Leaving them and walking away from the hospital every night; kissing their faces and whispering in their ear that "mommy or daddy loves them" is excruciatingly painful.

For all the trouble we seem to be giving the nurses, they must think we're very difficult people.

We walk a fragile line.

The only thing we can do for our babies at this point is love them and be an advocate for them. Learning to do the latter has brought us so much frustration and disappointment. Is is that we have unreasonable expectations? Is is that Steve and I are (in general) over prepared for most things and expect that others are as well? Is it that we have confrontational personalities (though I don't think we do)? Is it that the things we value in others professionally are actually rare?

What if we bring Lilly home before Josiah?

How can we possibly enjoy time at home with Lilly when he's there by himself? Could YOU walk away from him every day?

I'm crying again. I keep messing up what I'm typing because my eyes are all blurry and I keep stopping to blow my nose. Hopefully I've caught all the spelling mistakes so far........

It's March 1st today. A whole month has come and gone since their birth. Every day they look better.... healthier thanks to the NICU staff. We are grateful for their expertise. The first week we were there, one nurse pointed out that when she was our age the technology to save them didn't exist. How amazing.

Thank you again for all the love, prayers, encouragement and support you've given to Steve, Josiah, Lilly and I. You may not understand how much your generosity means to us, so we vainly attempt to remind you throughout the weeks, hoping you'll understand that, in part, we couldn't have come this far without you.

I can't see the moon anymore, the fireplaces has died away and I'm regretting again that I didn't drink caffeine free Pepsi for dinner.

I'm going to try to get a little sleep before I have to be awake again to pump and get ready for the day.

Thanks again.