Preemie Life - Day 5

To say that it was surreal,is the only way possible I can think to describe what leaving the hospital was like yesterday.  I spent the day in my room or at the NICU, pumping, being drugged, watching and caring for little miss, moving in and out of sleep/a drug induced comma, or chatting with hospital staff I was not going to see again soon but had become exceptionally close to after just a short amount of time.  Little miss spent the day under blue lights as if her body itself was an measure of the feeling of the day.  When Dr. J came to pick me up on his way home from work I was definitely ready to leave the hospital.  After two weeks of spending most of my time trapped in small little room, driving on the freeway was almost overwhelming.  After two weeks of hardly seeing my own kids, the ability to kiss them goodnight in their own beds was a special treat.  After two weeks of hospital food, eating something homemade was truly delicious.  After two weeks of sitting in a hospital bed, my own bed felt like a down feather delight.  After two weeks of only seeing my husband a half an hour each day, curling up next to him to sleep brought on the calmest most content hours of rest I've had in days.  But what I knew was going to hard, unreasonably so, was coming home leaving my baby behind.  Right before I left the hospital my favorite ob resident Anita came by to see me off and she had me laughing as I left the doors, but when we got into the car I kept looking back into the empty back seat a true reflection of the empty space in my heart.  I turned to Dr. J and said, "Is this real?  Does this feel real to you?"  And we both teared up and looked away out separate windows as if crying together would just be too difficult.  I must have said surreal ten times in the twenty minutes it took to get home and as we pulled onto the main street that leads to our home it suddenly hit me that it had been days since I'd felt anything move inside my belly and it just felt wrong to be driving on this street not pregnant.  It is so good to be home, to see my other children, to spend time with my husband.  I think we both realized that in ten years we have become so meshed together that to live without each other is no longer a possibility.  I can see the joy in these things, and I really do feel it but there is also this underlying ache, a wound unable to be filled with any other happiness of leaving my sweet baby behind.  I recognize that I'm lucky that she is still there, that eventually I will be able to drive her home from the hospital, that she is being well taken care of, and that not every person who leaves the hospital empty handed has the opportunity to go back and come out with full arms and a full heart.  I recognize all of these things and know that counting my blessings and naming them one by one should make me feel better but today, in this moment, all I can see is the blue.