#nicuwarrior

You don't choose to have a NICU baby. I call my little man my NICU warrior. He went through so much and was so little and so new. I wish I could rewind everything and make it so he didn't need to stay in the NICU. But I can't. And now that's part of our story. 

We went into the hospital never thinking that we would leave without taking him home. I think the worst I thought that would happen would be I would end up needing a c-section.

But we did. We left that hospital the same way we came in, as two people. But we should have been three.

The hospital had just put up their big Christmas tree. As we left I watched families taking their picture in front of it. I wanted a family picture. I wanted my son. My heart stopped. If Trey hadn't been there I might've fallen to the floor. I was leaving and I wasn't taking my son. It about killed me.

Every day we drove to the NICU. Every day I cried. Every day I left him there. For almost two weeks I couldn't take him home. He couldn't even leave the NICU.

There's so much I missed. So much I wish I could rewind and have a do-over. So many firsts I never got to experience.

I never heard his first cry.
I wasn't there when he opened his eyes for the first time.
I wasn't even the first person he saw. Or the second. Or the third, fourth, fifth. Maybe the tenth. Maybe, maybe I was the tenth person he saw.
I didn't feed him his first bottle.
I wasn't the first person to check on him in the middle of the night.
I didn't give him his first bath.
I didn't put his first diaper on him.
I wasn't the first to put diaper cream on him.
I wasn't the first person to dress him.
I wasn't the first person to pick him up when he began crying.

I wasn't the first person for a lot of things. I will never get that back. It breaks my heart to think that when he needed comforting from his mother, I couldn't be there. I wasn't the first for so many things I should have been.

But my son is alive.
My son is healthy.
My son is strong and growing.
And every morning we are the first people he sees.

I wasn't his first for so many things. But I'll be his first for the rest of his life.